THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 796.— October. 1907. 



SOME HOLIDAY NOTES FEOM BEEYDON. 

 By Arthur H. Patterson, A.M.B.A. 



My summer holidays, correctly speaking, start when the 

 schools break up — when the slums and alleys and wandering 

 children are for a time forgotten in my perambulations among 

 the mud-flats and the vagrant birds that haunt them. All other 

 days, too, that I can spare to visit Breydon are holidays. 



Turning over the pages of my ' Note-book,' a few entries 

 strike me as being of sufficient interest to include in this series. 

 The persecution of the Coots* driven out from the frozen broad- 

 lands went on well into February ; my entry for Feb. 4th is as 

 follows : — " Coots still about Breydon, many miserable creatures 

 hopping about on one leg from shot-broken limbs. Poor 

 wretches ! " 



The smallest Pink-footed Goose I ever saw was killed at 

 Buckenham during the second week in February. I regret I 

 was unable to take its dimensions. About two hundred Wigeon 

 visited Breydon, March 9th. 



On March 31st I was sailing across the submerged flats 

 when I observed a large Gull busily engaged on some long white 

 object, which I soon made out to be a large Eel as thick as 

 my wrist. I got almost within punt's length of it before it re- 

 luctantly took to wing, when I pulled the defunct fish into the 

 boat ; its head had been picked to pieces, a process undoubtedly 



* Cf. ' Zoologist,' ante, p. 85. 

 Zool. 4th ser. vol. XI , October, 1907. 2 f 



