104 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



shadow as they crossed him. They wheeled round once or 

 twice and again settled, near the " Lumps." 



Two or three other boats were hovering in my wake, among 

 them being that of the restless watcher, for he was pretty 

 well aware that, concealed under the foredeck of at least 

 one punt, there lay hidden a fowling-piece, whose owner 

 hung around far into the night with a fugitive hope of tiring 

 out the representative of the law and of getting, as local 

 slaughterers put it, "a clip at 'em." But I do not think 

 success attended his efforts then, although I am not so sure 

 that the whole of the birds got safely away. I noticed one 

 bird walked slightly lame, .as if it had been pricked by a 

 shot. The flock remained that (Friday) night and until the 

 following day, in the afternoon of which a very severe 

 thunderstorm broke over Breydon, during which they dis- 

 appeared. This flock of nine avocets is probably the largest 

 number that has been at one time on Breydon for more than 

 half a century. The late Fielding Harmer, writing in 1890, 

 remarks on the six 1 seen on May 3rd, 1887. " I have never 

 known so many at one time to be seen on Breydon," he writes, 

 and his acquaintance with that estuary dated back to 1854. 



Without the slightest doubt, many more rare species come 

 to Breydon than are ever heard of. Some may drop in to 

 feed and rest at night, and are gone by daybreak. And 

 among the flocks of commoner birds there must often be 

 strange sandpipers. The " obtaining " of pectoral and broad- 

 billed sandpipers, and other locally scarce forms, has seldom 

 been deliberate, as that of a larger stork or a spoonbill may 

 be; for unlike these, they so closely resemble both in size 

 and general appearance such common species as dunlins, 

 curlew-sandpipers, and the like, that they have invariably 

 been unidentified until after a promiscuous and random 

 slaughter. And here I must admit that, but for the gun, 

 their presence would never have been detected ; and to my 

 mind, in this solitary argument, the sportsman scores. Per- 

 sonally, however, I am content to remain ignorant rather 

 than indulge in wholesale massacre for the sake, or for the 

 mere possibility, of securing a rarity, or adding a new species 

 to the county fauna. 



1 Fielding Harmer mentions but five. There were six, to my knowledge, and 

 four were killed. 



