Lost British Birds. 
12 
nobler task to bring back to their country some of the fine 
types that have been lost ! The Great Bustard, for instance, 
which is now thriving and even breeding in England in the 
unnatural conditions of captivity; it would perhaps cost no 
more to restore this bird to our country than to slaughter a 
hundred elephants. It is true that the amusement of slay¬ 
ing a century of elephants with explosive bullets would be 
greater while it lasted; but it should afford a man a more 
enduring satisfaction to be able to think that he has accom¬ 
plished, or even only attempted, some task for which posterity 
will bless rather than execrate his memory. 
IV. Avocet — Recurvirostra avocettci. A handsome black 
and white bird to which the long, slender, upturned bill gives 
a somewhat singular appearance. On account of this form of 
bill it was locally called “ shoe-awl,” and “ shoeing-liorn ; ” 
also it was known as the yelper, barker, clinker, in allusion 
to its shrill barking note. In habits it is social, lively and 
playful, and feeds in a curious way, the birds moving on in 
an even row, swaying their bodies from side to side, with bills 
immersed in the shallow water; the action reminding one of a 
row of mowers mowing a field of grass. Stevenson ( Birds of 
Norfolk) says : ‘‘At Salthouse, long prior to the drainage of 
the marshes and the erection of a raised seabank, the avocets 
had become exterminated by the same wanton destruction of 
both birds and eggs as is yearly diminishing the numbers of 
lesser terns and ringed plover on the adjacent bank.” It 
ceased to breed in England between the years 1822 and 1825. 
Of former times Stevenson writes: “ I have conversed with 
an octogenarian fowler and marshman, named Pigott, who 
remembered the ‘ clinkers ’ (as the avocet was there called) 
breeding in the marshes by the hundreds, and used con¬ 
stantly to gather their eggs. Mr. Dowell, also, was informed 
by the late Harry Overton, a well-known gunner in that 
neighbourhood, that in his young time he used to gather the 
avocets’ eggs, filling his cap, coat-pockets, and even his 
stockings ; and the poor people thereabouts made puddings 
and pancakes of them. The birds were also as recklessly 
