230 On the Occurrence of some of the Rarer Species of Birds 



here we are again/' and there was I again in the same fix that 

 I was before. I waited, however, until I was so stiff and cramped that 

 I was obliged to change my position somewhat abruptly, and being 

 more wide-awake than they were before, off they were again, and 

 that day I saw them no more. However my ornithological ardour 

 was thoroughly aroused, and I determined to go again the next 

 morning, on the chance of their being once more at their favourite 

 halting-place ; and having secured the aid of a young brother-in-law 

 we sallied out before breakfast, and on arriving at the spot, to my 

 intense delight, there they were again, within a foot of the same 

 spot. 1 made the same long detour as before, as that was the only 

 possible chance of getting near them at all, and reached my covert 

 in safety, whereupon my brother-in-law walked down straight upon 

 them, and tried to drive them over my head. But, alas ! the fates 

 were unkind, and they passed over my head at the same discreet 

 distance as before, some eighty or ninety yards off, and it being 

 before the days of choke-bores, I saluted them with a despairing 

 right and left, and they came no more to their favourite " drawing." 

 I saw a beautiful pair of these birds also, in 1859, on the North 

 Curry Moor, in Somerset, keeping company on the flooded waste 

 with a flock of some thirty Teal. I watched them with great in- 

 terest for some time through a good telescope, but they were far too 

 wary to approach. They occur frequently at Poole and Christchurch, 

 too frequently for individual notice. Hart killed a beautifully- 

 plumaged bird on October 25th, 1881, at Blackberry Point, at 

 Christchurch ; and three others were obtained on August 8th, 22nd, 

 and 24th, 1882, in the harbour. 



Reeurvirostra Avocetta. " Avocet." One of the most strikingly- 

 marked birds amongst all the Waders, from its clearly defined 

 black and white plumage, and also remarkable for the peculiar 

 shape of its bill, which is turned up the wrong way! instead of 

 down, as in the Curlew and Whimbrel. I have a nice specimen 

 in my collection, which was one out of four, killed near Eastbourne, 

 about 1870. Time was when they were not uncommon at the 

 mouth of the Thames, and on the mud flats, and estuaries of our 

 rivers, but now, like so many others of their tribe, they are but 



