SOME FORGOTTEN EDIBLE BIRDS 



estimation as a table luxury. It was taken in nets 

 by means of stuffed decoys, much as were ruffs and 

 reeves, and commanded a high price. The Field Book, 

 published in the early thirties of last century, describes 

 it as " a bird of peculiar delicacy." Although fairly 

 common during the spring and autumn migrations, 

 this godwit is now but little known except to marsh 

 and shore gunners, and its undoubted merits as a table 

 bird seem to have passed into oblivion. 



Yet another wader, the dainty knot, a much smaller 

 bird than the godwit, which weighs as much as twelve 

 ounces, has become as a table bird almost completely 

 forgotten. Yet the knot was, until a century or so ago, 

 captured in much the same manner in the fen country, 

 fattened in the same way for sale, and as much esteemed 

 by many as its bigger cousin, the ruff. Knots are still 

 frequently seen round our coasts, in some seasons in 

 large numbers. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, one of the 

 greatest and keenest of modern wildfowlers, bagged, 

 not many years since, as many as a hundred and sixty 

 of these birds at a single discharge of his punt gun. 



Among other waders which, apparently, were looked 

 upon by our ancestors as good table birds, were the 

 redshank, curlew, dunlin, and bittern. In the time 

 of Henry VIII. the redshank was priced at the value 

 of a penny, at which rate teal and widgeon were then 

 sold. In 1833 the market value was from a shilling 

 to fifteen pence, which seems to indicate that the red- 

 shank is a bird of considerably higher table value than 

 many people suppose. The greenshank, a much rarer 

 bird in England than its cousin the redshank, is also 

 well flavoured as to its flesh, and used to be esteemed 

 very good eating. Dunlin, or ox-birds, known to our 

 predecessors of Henry VIII. 's time, and even now 

 by the country-folk of various districts, as "sturts," or 



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