24 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



IN DAYS OF YORE 



Snow was falling one evening in winter when a worn-out 

 old punt-gunner, at one time one of the most ardent sports- 

 men on Breydon, sat by my own bright fireside. " Breydon is 

 done for ! " said he ; and nothing is truer from an old punt- 

 gunner's point of view, for the best season in their day was 

 our present Close Season, when a few birds, good and rare, 

 still drop in among the mudflats ; and the days of big shots 

 in the winter-time are probably for ever gone, for Breydon 

 under its altered conditions does not " harbour them " as it 

 did fifty and sixty years ago. 



"The winters are different," remarked the old man. His 

 opinion is shared by many men who in their younger days 

 " followed " Breydon ; and they will describe in vivid language 

 " those days of ice and . snow." On further inquiry, and 

 reference also to past records, I am led to believe that 

 extremely severe winters only obtained at intervals, usually 

 of several years, as they have done since I myself have 

 chronicled events ; and on consideration, when certain winters, 

 e.g. 1854-5, 1870-1, etc., have been brought to the old gunners' 

 recollection, they have admitted " it may have been so." 

 ; "Be that as it may," said Pestell, "you may get a hard 

 winter,and you 'on't get the birds like you useter ; theer ain't the 

 feed, and the water is no suner on the flats than 'tis off again; 

 and if any of 'em do stop there there ain't enough water for 

 you to get your punt to 'em. They sit and laugh at you. 

 Fifty year ago I'm speakin' of sixty year why a wherry 

 could sail over the flats at high water from wall to wall, and 

 some parts, what are now dry at less 'an half ebb, were then 

 never free of water. Even in the sixties old brents (geese) used 

 to come fifty and sixty in a bunch to Breydon in hard weather. 



"We used to get a tremenjuss lot of pokers (pochards); 

 they used to come in and feed by scores on the poker-grass 

 what used to grow against the north side, right away from the 

 * Fleet' to 'Rotten Eye'; you could see 'em pullin' and 

 tuggin' at it, eatin' the little white peas on it. 1 Pokers are the 



"Poker-grass" was described by Pestell and two or three other old gunners 

 as a kind of " tangle-grass " ; it bore white flowers, which "turned to peas"; 

 and all admitted that " pokers gobbled 'em up." Eels used to lie in its labyrinths. 

 It was probably a species of Potamogeton, but is now quite extinct here. 



