BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS 1 



WINTER is much more like winter on the east than the west 

 of England, but only the natives appreciate it. Among the 

 many who loiter in summer among the placid lagoons or on 

 the reed-margined pathways of Broadland, few care to return 

 there when the winds and hailstorms of mid-winter play 

 havoc among acres of dead reeds and rushes. No one but 

 the naturalist and the wild-fowler then find excuse for haunting 

 the Broads, though the season is in most ways the best of 

 all. For the wild-fowl are many. They may be watched 

 bobbing up and down on the troubled waters, until only 

 narrow ' wakes/ kept open by the swans and the punts of the 

 Broadmen, are left between the ice-sheets approaching from 

 either shore. When the waters are coated with the ice, there 

 are mallard and teal and wigeon and many others to be seen 

 restlessly flitting from one Broad to another, to make at 

 length for the salter estuaries and the open sea. In their 

 passing, the flocks pay a too heavy toll to the local sportsman, 

 whose bag will often contain a surprising variety of species. 



In these rare winters of severe frosts, when the Broads are 

 locked in ice, there would be silence as profound as that of 

 the pine-woods, except for the ring of many skates. The 

 croak of the moorhen and the click of the coot is no longer 

 heard the one has gone begging around the precincts of the 



1 Most of the notes on Norfolk are contributed by Mr. A. H. Patterson. 



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