THE BIRD LIFE OF THE BRECK DISTRICT. 
Written and Illustrated with Photographs by Wm. FarREn. 
PART I. 
TP\HE so-called “Breck” district is a large expanse of sandy country in the north- 
west of Suffolk and south-west of Norfolk; it extends roughly on the south 
from Newmarket to Bury St. Edmunds, and on the north from Thetford to Brandon 
and Lakenheath, some twelve or fourteen miles each way; south and east it is 
bounded by the higher and more wooded parts of Suffolk, and in the north, crossing 
the Brandon River, it is gradually lost among the heath-land of Norfolk; while on 
the west it ends abruptly on the edge of the deep fens of north Cambridgeshire. 
A barren, infertile land, composed for the most part of sandy, flint-covered hills, 
the sparse vegetation kept close cropped by innumerable rabbits, and scarcely more 
fertile valleys, where grow quantities of bladder-campion, viper’s-bugloss, ragwort and 
poppies. Everywhere are long belts and clusters of Scotch fir, the blackness of which 
is only relieved by their own red stems, the hght green of occasional beeches, and 
here and there the silver stem of a birch. 
On the roadsides, where hedges occur at all, these also are» of Scotch fir—locally 
called “Scotch fences’”—at some parts cut and trained, dense and impenetrable; at 
others overgrown, twenty feet high, and nearly as thick at the tops, the lower parts 
gaunt, twisted stems, bare, and affording glimpses through of the country inside, 
sometimes of a field of rye—the only crop which flourishes at all on the sandy soil— 
sometimes of bare hills and scurrying rabbits, and sometimes of a veritable blaze of 
blue bugloss, white campion, yellow ragwort and red poppies. 
An infertile land, hopeless of cultivation and thinly populated, no wonder that it 
should have become what it is—one of the richest game preserves in England. Not 
only in the “Breck” itself, but for miles on every side, the country is devoted to 
the preservation cf game, excepting the western boundary which abuts on the Fens, 
and here the snipe and other wildfowl take the place of partridges and pheasants. 
In agricultural districts the daily talk is of crops; in the Breck it is of partridges 
and pheasants—everyone appears to haye an interest in the game, and understanding 
it, respects it accordingly. The hedgeless fields and heaths near the roads appear to be 
as inviolate as the most secluded parts; in the nesting season the birds sit as safely 
by the roadsides as they do in the fir belts (and what a wealth of nests is contained in 
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