io8 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



remarks: " I saw one on Breydon, May ipth, 1866, very wild 

 [sic]. Same day it was shot at on Caister beach, but missed, 

 and went away uninjured in a N.E. direction." What a pity 

 it is we have not a line respecting its manners and its doings; 

 the whole entry seems to suggest the injunction " Shoot it!" 



Booth was the first to detect the white-winged black tern 

 on Breydon. Harmer says he saw Mr. Booth shoot four of 

 them, " all at one discharge . . . at 3 a.m., on May 26th, 1871 ; 

 where, seven years later, on May 8th, two gull-billed terns 

 were also obtained." 



In concluding this chapter, it may be as well to impress on 

 those who should intend visiting this far-famed bird resort, 

 that May is, without exception, the most interesting month 

 in the year. Arrangements should be made beforehand with 

 some well-known Breydoner to have his punt in readiness ; 

 and the flood tide should be chosen. If a south-easterly wind 

 be prevailing, all the better. 1 The fact that disappointment 

 may follow makes good the old saying, that " the best laid 

 schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley." Says Fielding 

 Harmer: "... In 1 866, May 2Oth, and for three or four days 

 after, godwits and knots were passing here in a N.E. direction 

 in thousands, followed for several days by stragglers ; but 

 May, 1 887, only two godwits were seen and four knots shot." 



I myself have known a year to pass by without a solitary 

 godwit being observed. 



1 Vide Nature in Eastern Norfolk, pp. 237-8. 



