BREYDON IN LEISURELY AUTUMN 153 



near the surface. It is odd to see the sharp underturn of the 

 bird's head when it catches sight of a likely victim, dropping 

 backwards in its flight and suddenly, " like a bolt from the 

 blue/' dashing obliquely at it and seizing it with unerring 

 aim. 



A youngster on the flat has been watching its mother 

 fishing, and lifts itself, all a-flutter and vociferous as any 

 young starling, to receive the fish which is presently most 

 adroitly dropped between its mandibles. 



I never tire of watching these delightful creatures, old and 

 young, fishing and begging, toying and toiling. This high 

 and often dry flat at the left of the entrance to the " Ship " 

 drain is a favourite resort of the various terns, the little terns 

 in particular, which in spring make it a kind of half-way 

 house, and in the early autumn a sort of nursery for their 

 youngsters. I have spent an hour at a time near this flat 

 watching them, and wondering how each bird knows its own 

 among the ten or twenty squealing chicks, sitting in a line, 

 about a yard apart. It is curious how a mother tern will 

 pass three, four, or five, and stop at the sixth, delivering to it 

 a portion of its dinner a nice, fresh young herring. Another 

 flits by to the twelfth, and scarcely does one little one of all 

 the first eleven raise more than a bill to greet the passer-by, 

 but the twelfth bird is all a-flutter and a-fuss to welcome it. 

 Mutual recognition seems a certainty. I noticed that the 

 elder bird always " cheeped " as it neared its own offspring, 

 and sometimes dropped the fish beside it, as if to tempt the 

 little thing to learn to help itself. The number of terns visit- 

 ing Breydon in August is largely influenced by the abundance 

 or scarcity of herring-syle. 



A few small waders are passed, chiefly young dunlins and 

 redshanks, tame as house-sparrows, for they have not yet 

 learnt that man is a butcher. The young dunlins are in- 

 differently marked, hardly so drab as they will be in mid- 

 winter ; while an adult bird or two, solitary in habit, and just 

 now freed from the cares of domesticity, still retain the 

 livelier hues of springtime, the black horseshoe patch being 

 as well-defined as ever. The saddle-backed and the common 

 gulls are as tame as pheasants, seemingly knowing that 

 harm would not come to them in the sunnier days, while of 

 the black-heads, the old are fast losing their hoods and the 



