236 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



the gathering of the clans, and I confess I never saw any- 

 thing in the rat line to equal it. The rats shot away on 

 my coming in all directions, in a manner that I can only 

 describe as like sparks flying from the seething hot iron on 

 an anvil at the first heavy blow. The "super" of my time 

 started his reign by issuing an edict against the rats, and a 

 stone shed with rat-proof doors (?) was completed (and may 

 still remain), and all the horses killed were at once properly 

 " flensed " and the beef hung. The rats soon began to com- 

 plain of a famine, and the first morning after the new regime 

 had commenced I noticed that the bottom of the meat-house 

 doors showed marks of many a score hungry rats' teeth. 

 I set two large French wire-traps, baited with maize, that 

 night against the doors, and in the morning discovered them 

 cram full of struggling rats ! If my memory serves me 

 rightly, I captured seventy-three rats the first two nights, 

 and for some nights after found them still as eager to enter. 

 I hope the good work then begun has been since carried on, 



and that the rats are now rare in D Zoo. 



I myself have never observed a rat afloat on Breydon on 

 a piece of ice, but I can quite credit reports which have 

 come to me of these creatures, pressed for food in hard 

 winters, venturing on to the ice at night for wounded fowl, 

 and being caught in the break-up of the ice-field which, in 

 the lower reaches, takes place suddenly at the fall of the tide. 

 The poor things, to be pitied in their distress, have been in 

 sorry plight, and had a rough time of it in more ways than 

 one when being borne seawards. 



CURIOUS NESTING SITES 



On July 1st, 1897, I inserted the following note in the 

 Eastern Daily Press : 



" SIR, Birds' nests are, although I am no oologist myself, 

 of much interest to me, inasmuch as one sees in their con- 

 struction, placement, and environment, the strange workings 

 of bird instinct which, in many cases, has been so carried 

 out that reason, or something very little removed from it, has 

 been added to the other quality. The predilection nowa- 

 days shown by house-martins for country residences in pre- 

 ference to town life is a noticeable feature. We now have in 



