A SUNDAY ON BREYDON. 369 



powerful old marine telescope. Handy old instrument ! How 

 many Spoonbills have I not watched through your lenses ! That 

 odd Curlew piped as his relatives went by, but remained. He 

 means no doubt to stay a few days longer. 



7.30. — The sun has dropped behind a purple cloud-bank ; 

 his glories are reflected upon a shoal of cloud specks that 

 remind us of a flock of gilded sheep. The young crescent moon 

 is high up in the heavens, and travelling along a wind-promising 

 sky, that did not belie our forecast for the morrow. As we close 

 the cabin doors several Curlews are excitedly " koi-koi "-ing 

 overhead; they have been scared by a distant gun. A marsh- 

 prowler had probably fallen in with some young Mallard. The 

 watcher yonder, undoubtedly fuming in his houseboat, thinks 

 differently. He cannot be in two places at once, and most pro- 

 bably is wondering whether that lot of Curlews " up'ard " had 

 lost any of its members. Kedshanks are piping on a flat, making 

 a late supper, most probably of marine Gammaridce, mixing 

 with them, as likely as not, a few small Hydrobiidce that hide 

 under the prostrate " wigeon-grass," and long for the rising 

 waters. The clear double " pleu, pleu" of a Greenshank away 

 to the right is answered by a fellow out there on the left. How 

 loudly they pipe out their distinct and metallic call-notes ! 

 But those Curlews ! they cannot forget it. We can hear them 

 long after the doors are closed, and the clamour calls vividly to 

 mind how as a boy I used, on a drizzly night during the autumnal 

 migration, to slip out into the back yard at home and listen 

 eagerly to the bewildered " sickle-bills" above the glare of the 

 town lights, charmed and thrilled, too, by the key- whistled sort 

 of note the Dunlins blew ; and when the Knot and the Godwit, 

 and now and again an unknown bird, joined in the chorus, 

 that made some of the townsfolk shake their heads, and think 

 of the spirits of the night. 



Feeling considerably "run down," on the afternoon of 

 Aug. 5th I provisioned my punt, and started from Breydon 

 Bridge to spend the Sunday and a night or two on my favourite 

 Breydon. The flood-tide I was unable to catch, and the wind 

 was dead against me I pass over the mishap or two that befell 



