THE RUFF AND REEVE. 311 



early in the month of April, and departing late in September ; con- 

 sequently they breed and rear their young whilst residents here. 

 They are generally very shy ; and, from their present scarcity, it is 

 seldom the sportsman meets with them in the shooting season. Their 

 favourite haunts are fens and marshes : they feed in wet and swampy 

 grounds, but seldom, if ever, on salt oozes. During the breeding 

 season they frequent drier grounds, and assemble on small hillocks, 

 in numbers of about ten, twenty, and sometimes more. Seventy or 

 eighty have been seen together in the Norfolk fens, but not of late 

 years.* 



When so assembled they are termed " hilled :" and just as if in 

 pitched battle, the ruffs engage in apparently desperate combat one 

 with another the object of their interesting fights being, the pos- 

 session of the reeves, about which they are extremely tenacious, and 

 contend with much fierceness and prolonged quarrel, in order to 

 gratify their amatory propensities : 



The ruff is pugilistic, bold, and debonair ; 

 And in bloody battle wins his fair. 



The fens of Lincolnshire were long celebrated as the favourite 

 resort of these birds. Wells, in his History of the Fens, mentions 

 that " those rare and delicate birds, called the ' ruff and ree,' are 

 found here, and are trained with considerable expense and difficulty." 



There are two methods resorted to by the fowler for taking these 

 birds : one during spring, when the ruffs hill ; the other in autumn, 

 when they have no longer occasion or desire for sexual intercourse. 

 The fowler having discovered the spot where the ruffs have held 

 their love battles, repairs thither in the morning before day-break : 

 an experienced fenman soon finds out their blood-stained hills, by 

 the trodden turf, which, in some places where much fighting has 

 been engaged in, is often quite bare, from the incessant trampling of 

 their little feet, as they run to and fro dashing at their antagonists 

 with a courage and determination quite astonishing. Arrived at the 

 spot, the fowler spreads a clap net about seventeen feet in length by 

 six in breadth ;f the net being furnished with a pole at each end, pre- 

 cisely similar to an ordinary clap net for catching other land-birds at 



* Lubbock. 



f Montague. Pennant speaks of the clap net used for this purpose as being four- 

 teen yards in length and four in breadth. 



