362 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



begun the day before by a Heron, who found it "too large an 

 order " to swallow. I showed it to the watcher, who envied me 

 my possession, and it afterwards, accompanied by onions, made, 

 he tells me, " a rattling good dinner" for him. 



A young Spoonbill most obligingly alighted on the edge of a 

 flat in front of my houseboat, and started a thorough over- 

 hauling of his already spotless plumage. With my glasses in 

 one hand and a pen in the other, I knelt in my stern-sheets, 

 using my hatch for a desk, and roughly dashed on a slip of 

 waste-paper six very unorthodox attitudes, which no sane taxi- 

 dermist would ever dare display in setting up a specimen. The 

 accompanying illustrations, taken in less minutes than in 

 number, are probably the only ones ever secured under similar 

 circumstances. This was on May 11th. 



On May 12th, fifty-two Grey Plovers — beauties ! dropped in. 



The manners of a Cuckoo, restlessly flitting about near the 

 railway, not far from my houseboat, attracted my attention on 

 May 18th. From its mouth depended a large black object which 

 I have little hesitation in deciding was a slug — one of those big 

 ditch-side prowlers, Avion ater ; it seemed much too large to 

 swallow, and I hoped, by harassing its captor, it would drop it 

 for my especial edification, but I was disappointed. It would be 

 interesting if it could be proved beyond a doubt that Cuculus 

 occasionally preys on Limacidce. 



Several Knots "in the red" of spring-time visited Breydon 

 on the 25th. The watcher assured me that on the 13th a flock 

 of between fifty and sixty came to the flats ; a rare thing nowa- 

 days, for this bird which visited us in the spring in large flocks 

 in the sixties very rarely puts in an appearance on the spring 

 migration. 



I saw two very immature Spoonbills on June 7th. The visits 

 of this species were very few during the season. The congre- 

 gating of Starlings on the prostrate Zostera at low water, on 

 their hunting trips for mudworms and stranded crustaceans, was 

 a marked feature this year. 



During the early part of August the Black-headed Gulls spent 

 much of their time picking mudworms (Nereis) out of the ooze. 

 They are very quick in snatching out the luscious worm, often 

 running to the edge of the "drain" in order to wash it. I tried 



