“270 
The Animal-Lore of Shahspeare s Time. 
cry which the bittern gives out was imagined to be due to 
the bird burying its beak in the mud, or inserting it in a 
hollow reed; but modern observers have borne witness to 
the fact that the bittern, when it utters its note, raises its 
bill perpendicularly. 
Drayton describes how— 
“ The buzzing bitter sits, which through his hollow bill 
A sudden bellowing sends, which many times doth fill 
The neighbouring marsh with noise, as though a bull did roar.” 
(. Polyolbion , song xxv.) 
“ The Shovelar with his brode beck.’ 
' J vA "" j • (Skelton, Philip Sparoiv.) 
“ The shouler, which so shakes the air with saily wings, 
That ever as he flies, you still would think he sings.” 
(Drayton, Polyolbion , song xxv.) 
The word shovellewre, or shovelar, has been interpreted 
by some authors as designating a variety of duck, and by 
others as denoting the white spoonbill, a bird now only 
an occasional visitor to our shores. Sir Thomas Browne, 
in his account of the birds of Norfolk, mentions— 
“the platea, or shovelard, which build upon the tops of high trees. 
They formerly built in the hernery at Clayton and Reedham, now at 
Trimley, in Suffolk. They come in March, and are shot by fowlers, 
not for their meat, but for the handsomeness of the same ; remarkable 
in their white colour, copped crown, and spoon or spatule-like bill.” 
(Yol. iv.) 
Olaus Magnus, in his work on Norway and Sweden 
(p. 200), writes:— 
“ There is a bird called a slievelar that is in the Northern waters, 
that is a cruel enemy to birds that dive in the sea to catch fish : 
Avherefore she lyes in wait for them thus; she flyes upon them, and 
bites their heads, and rends them till she hath got the prey for herself; 
and they, thus tormented, soon let it go.” 
As he does not describe the bird, it is impossible to 
identify the species. The work was originally written in 
