BIRDS AND THE GREAT SNOW. 85 



one Jack-Snipe was noticed in the market, but numerous bunches 

 of Fieldfares, Thrushes, Blackbirds, and other small birds were 

 on sale, and these found ready customers, which wildfowl 

 did not. 



" So you've been killing your friends — the slug-eaters ! " I 

 said to a couple of different stall-keepers, touching the dead 

 Blackbirds with my finger. 



" Yow'd think them friends, 'bor," said one, " if yow saw 'em 

 in the summer ! " 



"Yow'd think so," said the other, " if yow was jist to see 'em 

 among our fruit! " 



But neither could tell me where they got their fruit from in 

 winter ; but so vindictiveness had slain them, and petulance was 

 exhibited even in referring to them. And as Blackbirds are 

 esteemed uncommonly good eating in Yarmouth, no mercy is 

 ever shown them. 



On the 30th I dropped upon " Jigger " Halls, an intelligent 

 young engineer, whose works throw their shadow into Breydon, 

 and who is ever ready to show visitors this magnificent estuary 

 in his motor-launch, and who also follows Breydon with a big 

 gun, " when there's anything about." He was just sitting down 

 to his Sunday dinner, after a week's wild life on Breydon, sleep- 

 ing at night in his snug, roomy houseboat, returning home only 

 at intervals with his game, which had a fairly ready private sale. 



"I closed down [the engineering shed] for the Christmas 

 week," said he, " and have had a week on Breydon — and haven't 

 done so bad." Let me summarise his experiences. 



He met with the first lot of fowl on the 23rd, getting several 

 Mallard and seventeen Coots. On the 24th he killed twenty-five 

 Coots at one shot with the big gun, and obtained altogether 

 " two or three linen-baskets " of these birds. There must have 

 been quite three thousand Coots on Breydon (frozen out from 

 the Broads) ; they kept much in line, like soldiers in a regiment 

 (as I have seen them here before in hard winters), and fed 

 ravenously on the sweet, fattening stems of the Zostera marina. 

 They make quite an audible scrunching noise in tearing it up. 

 A wretched adult Crested Grebe sat miserably bunched up on the 

 ice, literally starving ; he knocked it over with an oar as he 

 rowed along. 



