228 SEPTEMBER 



crop is separated from the great water-dropwort of the 

 inner dykes by a comely lake. When the birds have been 

 fasting and are fouled a little by salt water, they fly to 

 the neighbourhood of the swans to wash in the soft fresh 

 water at the edge of the reeds. 



The reed beds are themselves a marvel, an aeolian harp 

 in the ears of man and bird, both. They are thus on 

 many of our rivers, on the Essex Thames, and, best of all, 

 on the Ouse where it skirts the Port Holm at Godman- 

 chester and Huntingdon between the double railway 

 bridge and Lee s brook. These are a haven to the reed 

 warbler, whose pendant nest, a favourite of the cuckoo s, 

 you, too, can hardly miss. But at Abbotsbury, perhaps 

 because the bed is so wide, so inviolate, rarer birds than 

 these pitch their lonely tents. Luckier persons have 

 heard the lovely song even of the marsh warbler. Among 

 the reeds are delightful inlets and bays where the water is 

 salter or fresher, according to the distance from the sea. 

 One bay especially is pleasing to the taste of duck of 

 many sorts, and at the inland edge is one of the oldest 

 of the decoys, those ingenious and rather brutal traps 

 designed in an age when such food made the difference 

 between luxury and starvation. How often in the 

 monkish chronicles of another Fenland we find allusions 

 to the wild-bird snare ! And even to-day one of the few 

 decoys that excels the subtle passages from the reed-bay 

 at Abbotsbury is to be seen near Crowland Abbey, whose 

 monks, like those of Abbotsbury, found the wild bird, 

 including even the snipe, &quot; facile to snare/* 



7- 



News came that players were to act on an old stage the 

 latest scene in the progressive pageant of English land- 



