358 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



between the mud-flats, and jostles in great jagged slabs on 

 the ebbtide to the sea. Here with various wild-fowl they 

 share the food to be found in the open * wakes ' and on the 

 bared mud-flats, from which the tide has dragged and drifted 

 the more rotten ice. To such a place as Breydon Waters, 

 with its vast acres of ooze, flock various waders. To 

 Breydon, the one great salt-water Broad, in severe weather 

 crowd thousands of grey dunlins, with grey plovers, knots, 

 curlews, and many other waders, and where there is any 



open water 

 there drop in 

 ' hard fowl ' in 

 flocks poch- 

 ards, tufted 

 ducks, scaups, 

 scoters, and 

 often smews > 

 and dabchicks, 

 white - fronted 

 geese, ' Scotch brents,' shelducks, whooper swans, driven 

 south by the wintry snows. 



But it is in the days that the ice first ' lays ' on the fresh- 

 water Broads, and the snow lies deep on the marshes and 

 fenny places, that to those waters come the greatest crowd 

 of fowl. It is then that the privileged native sportsman takes 

 heavy toll, and even the labouring gunner may earn a meal 

 from their flocks as they pass uneasily from one unfriendly 

 lagoon to another, should they pass over the ' free shooting ' 

 corners where it is still his right to sport. 



On such a day, when the heavy black squalls, pushed 

 along from the north by the howling wind, dissolve them- 

 selves in snow, like wool, and others follow on charged with 

 stinging hail, it is out of the question save for the hardiest 



GREAT-CRESTED GREBE 



