366 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



quaint and favourite species ? Why wait until it shall verge on 

 extinction ? 



Late in August, I one day crept up a bank and peered over 

 into a marsh, up one low-lying corner of which was a puddle not 

 twenty feet in circumference. I was delighted to see in and 

 around it nine Eedshanks, one Greenshank, three Lapwings, 

 three or four Gulls, three Einged Plovers, and three huge farm- 

 horses, around whose legs some of the birds stood airing their 

 freshly-washed clothes. Such a little "happy family" was, to 

 me, intensely interesting. 



I watched two young and stupidly tame Knots on Aug. 30th, 

 which fed within a few feet of my punt as I lay observing their 

 tactics. This sluggish bird feeds in a very leisurely way, probing 

 the mud less than half a bill's length, and swallowing a captured 

 mudworm with a shaky little movement of the head without 

 bringing it to a level with its shoulders. And while the pert 

 Einged Plover scours over a superficial acre of ooze, the Knot is 

 content in probing an area that might be covered with a blanket. 



On Sept. 18th, hundreds — some five hundred at least — of 

 Starlings were busily feeding and squabbling on a low part of a 

 Breydon marsh, smothered with the purple Michaelmas daisy. A 

 gunner, who let two barrels into them, secured two dozen, mostly 

 young birds with dingy brown heads. Being interested to know 

 for what purpose they had congregated, I purchased a number 

 and dissected them, finding their gizzards crammed with a mass 

 of matted stuff which resembled cocoa-nut fibre, which on sepa- 

 rating resolved itself into scores of legs of the "daddy long-legs " 

 (Tipula) ; the softer bodies and the wings (if they actually swal- 

 lowed them) were reduced to an indefinable pulp. A number of 

 Hydrobiidce and Shorehoppers (Orchestia littorea), with some 

 beetles, and in one instance a winkle, were the only other objects 

 I discovered. The huge number of these destructive pests the 

 Starling must make off with ought to be favourably noticed by 

 the farmer and the gardener, the latter of whom might forgive it 

 the few mulberries it manages to pilfer from his trees. 



