334 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
nesting species, subject to the rising waters in spring, when 
the snow and ice began, at last, to change to sleet and rain; and 
to the far more serious floods in July—when all later nests 
were washed away, or rendered, for all practical purposes, about 
as valueless as the surrounding hay-crop. Taking Surlingham 
Broad as an example of most similar localities I can say that, 
though visiting it both in summer and autumn, and in all cases 
in exceptionally fine weather, I never saw so few birds of any kind, 
and the silence of the “marsh nightingales” was something 
painful. Even the harsh note of the Black-headed Bunting was 
rarely heard. Reed Warblers had not appeared in their usual 
numbers, and many were supposed to have died from the cold. 
Sedge birds, more plentiful, had both early and late nests 
destroyed, and their notes amongst the reeds in July were few and 
far between. Very few young birds were seen in September. 
Coots and Waterhens seemed almost exterminated, and the cry of 
either species was an event in the day. Even the chief test of 
numbers on such waters—the hour of sunset—showed how 
terribly the winter and summer, alike, had told upon them. 
Snipe, Redshanks, Lapwings, and Wild Ducks, shared the same 
fate, and when the “‘ronds” and marshes were mown in the 
autumn the remains of many young birds were found. I heard, 
also, on good authority, that on the Merton Estate, on the other 
side of the county, where various species of wildfowl nest yearly 
in a wild state, as many as sixty or seventy young ones were 
picked up dead on the margins of the meres in that neighbourhood, 
presumably from a want of sufficient insect food. 
Even the Corporation and other tame Swans, on the Yare, 
though, in ordinary seasons, able to challenge all other competitors 
as to the number of young reared, felt the effect of such a season, 
and the “fall” of cygnets was far below the average. How they 
subsisted in the severe and prolonged frosts it is difficult to 
imagine, as the swan-herd told me that some pairs on the broads, 
could not be got at from the ice; but their constant paddling in 
the large “ dykes” usually keeps an open “ wake,” which for the 
sake of the submerged weeds is always an attraction to fowl. The 
privations of the winter, therefore, and the cold backward spring, 
no doubt delayed their nesting operations, and then the height of | 
the waters drove several pairs from their accustomed haunts, that 
<* 
were long in settling elsewhere. The rest of the story, as told to 
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