STATUS OF THE SPOONBILL 181 
says: “‘ Upon the first payr of posts ”’ of a fair bridge, twenty 
feet wide and seventy feet long, over which the Queen was 
to pass “‘ were set too cumly square wyre cages, each a three 
feet long, too foot wide ; and by in them live bitters, curluz, 
shoovelarz, hearsheawz, godwitz, and such like dainty byrds, ' 
of the presents of Sylvanus the god of Food.” These birds, 
together with the fruit with which the second pair of posts 
were garnished, were no doubt served to the royal party after 
the pageant, but this, Laneham, who was doorkeeper of the 
council-chamber, does not tell us. 
Although it was the young Spoonbills which were generally 
eaten, in England at all events, there is a passage in Gesner’s 
* Historia Animalium ’’—possibly on the authority of Albertus 
or Turner—which shows that a custom existed of catching 
older birds on the shore, presumably by netting them. Gesner, 
who gives a very good plate of the Spoonbill, which he remarks 
the English call “a schofler vel shouelard,” says: “‘ Platea 
nostra... (translation) ‘‘is taken on the sea-shore in 
England, and fed in confinement on fish, and the insides of 
fowls, and other offal from the kitchen.”* In another place, 
relating his experience, he says: ‘‘ In England I hear that 
Spoonbills are tamed; at Ferrara in Italy I have seen tame 
ones, which were fed on kitchen refuse.”’+ 
The following recipe for dressing Spoonbills, written 
by that very learned doctor, Thomas Muffett, about 1595, 
seems to apply to adult birds, rather than to young ones: 
“Platee. Shovelars feed most commonly upon the Sea-coast 
upon cockles and shell-fish ; being taken home and dieted 
with new garbage and good meat, they are nothing inferior 
to fatted gulls.’ This was high praise. young Black-headed 
Gulls. well fed on bullock’s liver, being in great favour for the 
table. The native race of Spoonbills has passed away from 
England, but the regularity with which migrants return 
in the spring to Breydon Broad in Norfolk, and to one or 
two spots on the coast of Kent, indicates an inclination to 
breed with us again. That they would do so in some of 
our Heronries if they were as well protected: here as they 
have been in Holland, there can be little doubt. 
* Op. cit., Liber III, p. 641. 
+ Op. cit., p. 642. 
