344 
JOHN THOMAS, PUNT-GUNNER. 
obtained his liberty, he was amongst his beloved Breydon flats 
again; in spring and summer, autumn and winter, lie followed the 
migrants dropping in to feed, and to rest, in their season, so that it 
stands to reason they not infrequently came within range of his gun. 
Amongst the many birds slain by him may be mentioned the 
Black Stork (now in Norwich Museum), the Mediterannean 
Yellow-legged Herring Gull (in Mr. Connop’s Collection), several 
Spoonbills, Avocets, the Temminck’s Stint, and others. Every 
little parcel of “ Stints ” was eagerly examined through his brass-bare 
binoculars, in quest of “ Alexandrine Plovers ” (Kentish Plovers), 
and “ Pigmys,” and other less common species. He sometimes made 
good prices, now and then others reaped the benefit of his wild- 
fowling more tangibly than he did. 
Thomas made no profession of religion, yet, strangely enough, 
made it a rule to regard the Sabbath, and refrained from shooting 
on that day. But his walks with the wife and children would, 
somehow, instinctively lead him Breydonwarde. On one Sabbath 
evening they were all in Sunday best strolling along the South 
Breydon- Walls, when Mrs. Thomas, who was scanning the fiats 
with a pair of field-glasses, suddenly placed them in her husband’s 
hands, asking him what certain white objects on a mudflat in the 
distance might be. 
“Spoonbills by G !” ejaculated Thomas, who immediately 
retraced his steps to the boat house, Sunday notwithstanding, and 
throwing his hat and coat to the children, he slipped on his Breydon 
“ togs,” and pushed off. At one shot he killed two Spoonbills, 
which, being Close Season (it was in the early days of the Protection 
Acts), were safely smuggled home under his wife’s shawl. 
Mrs. Thomas aided and abetted her lord and master in his shoot- 
ing delinquencies. It was not an unfrequent thing to see her sitting 
on the punt’s stern of a summer’s evening, “Johnny” rowing her 
in a steady purposeful manner. We Brey don-frequenters noted 
these goings to and fro, and sometimes twitted him, when he 
invariably retorted he was “taking the old woman just fora blow,” 
but we knew that the “ blow ” was only a secondary matter, and 
that somewhere, in safe hiding from the wall-rats and prying eyes, 
was carefully stowed away some rare or valuable avine stranger, 
whose worth made profitable a second voyage to retrieve it. No one 
saw the process, but by some sleight of hand the bird would be 
