FEBRUARY 51 



bill from the surface of East Anglian mud-flats. And 

 it is not so long since a naturalist watched fourteen 

 Spoonbills running about restlessly on a sandy spit* 

 shovelling up the mud with their spoons. They spent 

 most of the day there, and were actually not molested. 

 Gone, too, as a breeding species, is the Black-tailed 

 Godwit ; gone more recently the Black Terns, " blue 

 darrs " of the fenmen, which used to hawk dragonfiies 

 above the lily-grown shallows, and breed in colonies 

 about the meres, as the Black-headed Gull continues 

 to do at the present day. Old fenmen remember when 

 the Marsh Harrier or Bald Buzzard used to quarter 

 the wet meadows regularly like a pointer, and describe 

 having seen the ducks make for the river when 

 pursued by it, and dive as it stooped at them. Gone 

 are the Ruffs which used to meet in tourney, trampling 

 bare their favourite " hills," as with heads down and 

 shields erected they sparred at each other like angry 

 bantam-cocks, each taking as his share as many of the 

 plainer Reeves as his prowess might win. A few 

 harassed birds may still linger, for eggs were taken in 

 1884, and perhaps later. 



So much for our losses, and now for the brighter side 

 of the picture. The exquisite little Bearded Tits, once 

 brought to a low ebb, seem to be no longer in danger of 

 extinction. Their chief peril lies in the fact that every 

 marshman knows that collectors will pay well for their 

 eggs. Savi's Warbler, which used to reel from some 



