xiv WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



my first sail across Breydon in the punt of a shoemaker 

 friend, whose boat-shed to-day adjoins my own. Since those 

 days of dreaming I have spent many pleasant hours upon 

 and around this favourite haunt, in companionship with the 

 birds that frequent it, and the rugged men who, from hard 

 necessity as well as instinctive liking, have tried to wrest 

 a precarious living out of its oozy depths. My own interest 

 in it has never lessened, and the present volume owes its 

 existence largely to this fascination. 



My old houseboat, the Moorhen, too leaky now to drift 

 about in the Broadland rivers, lies high and dry on a 

 Breydon "rond," against Banham's marsh farm, and makes 

 a snug observatory, from which the whole of Breydon lies 

 under observation. Under its roof I spend many a summer 

 night, and often a pleasant day, watching or listening to the 

 wild birds that at most seasons haunt the estuary. ' 



I well remember taking Professor Garstang to see Breydon 

 from the railway bridge. 



" What a magnificent fauna should be found here ! " he 

 remarked enthusiastically. 



He was not far wrong, for as a bird resort it was once noted 

 and is still eminent, and for the variety of its fishes and other 

 wild life it is unrivalled. 



My Nature in Eastern Norfolk, published in 1905, was 

 intended to be my last book, and it very nearly proved to be 

 so, for on the day that I dispatched the MS. to the publishers 

 I fell seriously ill, and did not recover for some months. I can 

 hardly hope ever to be so venturesome again as I have been, 

 for Breydon is a wild, hard place, trying even to the most 

 robust. 



The second part of this work is a continuation of my first 

 book, Notes of an East Coast Naturalist. Many of those 

 records were of a controversial character, and my observa- 

 tions not being then complete, are continued in the present 

 book, while other notes have been added since the publication 

 of the first series, for in Nature work there is no finality. 



