flIM) ; POi 'ESTUARY ERSON . WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY BY THE SAME AUTHOR NOTES OF AN EAST COAST NATURALIST NATURE IN EASTERN NORFOLK WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY BY ARTHUR H. PATTERSON » > ASSOCIATE MEMBER OF THE MARINE BIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM WITH A PREFATORY NOTE BY HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF BEDFORD WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published in 1907 TO HER GRACE MARY, DUCHESS OF BEDFORD THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 260917 The man who consecrates his hours By vig'rous effort and an honest aim, At once he draws the sting of life and death ; He walks with Nature, and her paths are peace." — YOUNG CONTENTS CHAPTER I BREYDON ....... i CHAPTER II WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON . . . . .12 i CHAPTER III MEN AND MANNERS . . . . . .46 CHAPTER IV BREYDON IN SPRINGTIME . . . . 72 CHAPTER V SUMMER HOURS ON BREYDON . . . .109 CHAPTER VI BREYDON IN LEISURELY AUTUMN . . . .148 CHAPTER VII BREYDON GULLS AND BREYDON CRABS . . .185 CHAPTER VIII FROM THE WATCHER'S NOTEBOOK . . . .196 viii WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY EAST COAST NOTES CHAPTER I PAGE SOME BIRD NOTES . . . . . 215 CHAPTER II SOME FISH NOTES ...... 289 CHAPTER III SOME MAMMALIAN NOTES . . . . . 335 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE SKIPPER OF THE " MOORHEN" . . . Frontispiece PAGE NORFOLK WATERWAYS IN ROMAN TIMES . . • . 3 BREYDON TO-DAY . . . . . . 9 COMPANIONS IN ADVERSITY. TUFTED DUCK AND SMEW . . 27 "TIME! GENTLEMEN!" RUFFS FIGHTING . . 30 DRIVEN SOUTH. REDWINGS MIGRATING . . 34 'MiD SNOW AND ICE. GOOSANDERS AND POCHARDS . 41 ON EVIL DAYS. COOTS ON BREYDON . . . . . 45 WHITE-FRONTED GEESE . . . . . . . 50 " FORTY WTINKS !" AVOCETS . . . . 53 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. BLACK AND WHITE STORKS AND SPOON- BILL . . . . . . . 59 DUNLINS . . . . . . . . . 68 ON THE ALERT. WHIMBREL . . . . 74 A BREYDON GUN-PUNT . . . . . . . 81 UNCOMFORTABLE QUARTERS. CORMORANTS ON BREYDON . . 83 THE OSPREY . . . . . . 87 EXPECTATION. TURNSTONES AND RINGED PLOVER . . . 90 PEREGRINE FALCON . . . . . . 99 SPOONBILLS . ..... 102 "TWELFTH OF MAY — GODWIT-DAY." BAR-TAILED GODWITS . . 107 ON STRANGE GROUND. PALLAS' SAND-GROUSE . . . . 115 "WHAT'S BEEN HERE?" COMMON TERNS . . . . 129 DINNER-TIME. HERONS ....... 136 THE SERENADERS. REED-WARBLERS ..... 142 FAMILY CARES. LITTLE TERNS . . . . . . 151 CURLEWS AND DUNLINS . . . . . . . 160 HALCYON DAYS. KINGFISHERS . . . • J74 A RARE VISITOR. SABINE'S GULL . . . . . 188 x WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY PAGE IN SPRING ATTIRE. GREY PLOVERS . . . . .197 BLACK-TAILED GODWIT AND GREENSHANK . . . . 205 DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE. STILT AND RINGED PLOVER . . 209 THE ENTOMOLOGISTS. SWALLOWS . . . . . 219 "WHO SAID BEETLES?" RED-BACKED SHRIKE . . . 239 RED-CRESTED WHISTLING DUCK, GOLDEN EYE, SHELD-DUCK . 245 A LIKELY CORNER. WOODCOCK . . . . . 262 WHITE-WINGED BLACK TERN ...... 273 ON THE ALERT. PINTAIL, WIGEON, TEAL . ... 280 FEEDING-TIME. RINGED PLOVERS ..... 283 THE CRANE ........ 286 THE ICHTHYOLOGIST. GREAT NORTHERN DIVER . . . 290 PREFATORY NOTE ENG as it does right in the track of migration, no county in England has such a large list of birds as Norfolk, or records so many rare visitors. The seashore, the mudflats of Breydon, the marsh- lands of the Broads, all teem with bird-life, and still boast themselves the home of many rare breeding species. In this county Mr. Patterson has spent most of his life, devoting all his spare time to the study of Nature. His perseverance in the face of early troubles which would have completely disheartened many physically stronger men, his keen powers of observa- tion, accuracy, and love of Nature, make his books a valuable contribution to Natural History as trust- worthy records of the habits and traits of the fauna of his county. As a student, rather than a professed scientist, his books have a special value for other students as giving an insight into his own methods, and the steps by which he became familiar with the wild life round him. The present volume brings the annals of Breydon up to date, and will be a welcome addition to ornitho- logical literature. M. BEDFORD, Woburn AUTHOR'S NOTE AiHORT preface seems to me necessary in order to explain my reasons for adding to the list of volumes relating to my beloved county. From my earliest boyhood Breydon, that most interesting tidal water lying to the west of Great Yarmouth, has had an unspeakable charm for me. My father hired an allotment garden at Runham Vauxhall, now built upon by the council schools. The gardens were separated from Breydon by a reedy ditch (wherein I first studied the habits of sticklebacks and ditch prawns), the New Road, the railway, a wide marsh, and the " walls." When I was sufficiently big to climb the tool shed, I used to do so to catch a glimpse of a silver streak that edged the apex of the walls at high water — that was Breydon / The boom of a distant punt-gun and the sharper crack of a fowling-piece conjured up in my mind strange fancies, which were heightened by the scream of the startled wildfowl, and the passing to and fro overhead of great flocks of gulls. I caught my first real glimpse of Breydon one day when, armed with a fish-head and a length of knotted twine, I slipped down, with other muddy urchins, unknown to my father, to the riverside, in quest of a "sea-sammy" (crab), which I dared not take home. My father's inveterate abhorrence, not lessened in this his eighty-ninth year, of "the muddy, dangerous place," only served to increase my interest in it, and as I became still keener to explore it, I would skulk at the heels of any tolerant gunner to get on to the "walls," or ramble to its vicinity whenever opportunity offered. I shall never forget xiv WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY my first sail across Breydon in the punt of a shoemaker friend, whose boat-shed to-day adjoins my own. Since those days of dreaming I have spent many pleasant hours upon and around this favourite haunt, in companionship with the birds that frequent it, and the rugged men who, from hard necessity as well as instinctive liking, have tried to wrest a precarious living out of its oozy depths. My own interest in it has never lessened, and the present volume owes its existence largely to this fascination. My old houseboat, the Moorhen, too leaky now to drift about in the Broadland rivers, lies high and dry on a Breydon "rond," against Banham's marsh farm, and makes a snug observatory, from which the whole of Breydon lies under observation. Under its roof I spend many a summer night, and often a pleasant day, watching or listening to the wild birds that at most seasons haunt the estuary. ' I well remember taking Professor Garstang to see Breydon from the railway bridge. " What a magnificent fauna should be found here ! " he remarked enthusiastically. He was not far wrong, for as a bird resort it was once noted and is still eminent, and for the variety of its fishes and other wild life it is unrivalled. My Nature in Eastern Norfolk, published in 1905, was intended to be my last book, and it very nearly proved to be so, for on the day that I dispatched the MS. to the publishers I fell seriously ill, and did not recover for some months. I can hardly hope ever to be so venturesome again as I have been, for Breydon is a wild, hard place, trying even to the most robust. The second part of this work is a continuation of my first book, Notes of an East Coast Naturalist. Many of those records were of a controversial character, and my observa- tions not being then complete, are continued in the present book, while other notes have been added since the publication of the first series, for in Nature work there is no finality. AUTHOR'S NOTE xv Perhaps I ought to apologise for the rather crude sketches illustrating this volume. I am a self-taught amateur artist ; and it was only at the urgent solicitation of two or three of my sincerest friends, and in accordance with the wishes of my publishers, that I consented to " try my hand." One word more. I should like to say that but for my systematic entering of Nature records and incidents daily, or, I should rather say, promptly and regularly, my three East Coast books would never have been written. I began to make " notes " as soon as their value and interest dawned upon me — when I was but a youth, in 1878 — a practice I have ever since continued. I have also pasted in my notebooks all correspondence on Natural History subjects as I received it ; and the "notes" at the end of this volume will show how useful this habit has been to me ; further, these volumes will prove how much there is to be seen and noted even in a very circumscribed area by a man of limited education, means, and leisure. That naturalist is badly situated indeed who cannot accomplish more or at least as much as I have done. A. H. P. IBIS HOUSE, GREAT YARMOUTH WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY CHAPTER I BREYDON THREE not inconsiderable rivers, the Yare, the Waveney, and the Bure, fed by sundry smaller streams, pour their mingled waters through Yar- mouth Haven into the sea. In the course of their meander- ings through the lowlands, here and there in the deeper de- pressions of the valleys, they broaden out into shallow lakes known as the famous Broads. At all seasons of the year their waters are fresh, although at long intervals exceedingly high tides carry up the " salts " perilously near to them. The confluent rivers combine to form, on the western side of Yarmouth, a large inland lake some miles in extent, known as Breydon — the Broad Water of the Saxons — which acts as a natural backwater to Yarmouth Harbour. I have often pictured to myself what a magnificent estuary this water-covered plain must have been in the ages long ago, when the Roman galleons sailed up Garienis Ostium to their camp at Burgh Castle, signalling "All's well!" to the camp at Caister, as their vessels ploughed the sea that then rolled over the site of Yarmouth, as the North Sea now sweeps over Scroby Sands. From the stern sheets of the old Moorhen I can turn my glasses round, sighting clearly the hanger at Caister West End, its sandy cliff-line distinctly showing beyond the level of the Bure marshes, and trending away north-west, forming a background for windmills and the brown-tanned sails of the wherries that follow the course of the winding Bure. To the westward the "heights" that were B 2 WILD LI-FE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY »i> * « ^T * ^ „ *, fl*1 J •> •» lapped by 't'Ke s'ea-waves are seen extending beyond Brad- well to Burgh Castle, where we lose their outlines in a leafy screen of trees and herbage. In the course of time an accumulation of alternate layers of moor and silt gradually pushed back the waters from this great alluvial flat, and the drift sand from the eastward helped in this direction. It is said that about the time of Edward the Confessor, the sea retreated from the sand at the mouth of the estuary on which Yarmouth now stands. "And then there were two channelles for shippes and fishermen to passe and enter into that arme of the sea for utterance of their fishe and marchendizes, which were con- veyed to diverse partes and places, as well in the countye of Norfolke as in the countye of Suffolke, by reason that all the wholle levell of the marshes and fennes, which now are betwixte Yermouthe and the citie of Norwiche, were then all an arme of the sea, enteringe within the lande by the mouth of Hierus; and this was about the yere of our Saviour MXL and longe before." l An ancient book, which had made use of this much older quotation, very concisely disposes of any further "processes" by remarking : " When this sand became inhabitable, and a considerable town formed upon its banks, the course of the sea being altered, the rivers and marshes settled in the manner we now find them." One loves at leisure to linger over the ancient and fascina- ting records of " Old Yarmouth," and follow its vicissitudes ; also to conjure up in the mind pictures of the slow but certain processes of Nature which must have built up its foundations from the sea; and, unfortunately, it is to the latter one must turn in accounting for Breydon in the form we see it to-day, for it seems vain to dig into these old tomes for satisfactory data. But one thing is certain, that but for the " walls," or banks, enclosing the rivers and Breydon, a few big tides would very speedily turn the lowlands into another although more restricted Garienis Ostium ; and great would be the joy of those who delight to wait on wild-fowl, which would, with a return of the ancient conditions, again flock to the watery wastes. But this will not happen, until the sea 1 MS. cui Tit. " Create Yarmouth: a Bookeof the foundacion and antiquitye of the sayde Towne," &c., fo. 1560. BREYDON 5 breaks through at Horsey, or thereabouts, which I feel con- vinced must some day befall. I am strongly inclined to think that it must have been about the time of the cutting of the first Haven, in the fourteenth century, that the enclosing of these waterways was begun. (The history of the Six Havens, which were afterwards constructed, is one of intense interest, the record of the straits the inhabitants were put to, their great sacrifices, and their indomitable energies, makes most entertaining reading.) Whoever raised these mounds made them well, although breakages and consequent floods have happened from time to time, and even in my own recollection two or three inunda- tions, one of them of a very extensive character, have occurred, through the banks having been broken by stress of heavy tides. Continual vigilance has to be exercised by the marshmen who attend to the drainage mills, and whose place it is to see that weak places are strengthened and the necessary elevation maintained. The processes of reclamation must have been slow ; but they have been exceedingly simple. At one time the low level, now forming the marshes and Breydon, must have been an immense area of "saltings." An extensive series of walls — continuous, zigzagging mounds, following the trend of the tides — were thrown up above the level of high water, the soil that formed them being dug out of what forth- with became deep, parallel ditches. Here two birds were killed with one stone, for the ditches (locally " decks " or dykes) formed natural drains or channels, into which the surplus water from the newly made marshes naturally drained. In connection with these a great number of smaller drains were cut in various directions, extending for miles. Windmills were erected at intervals near the banks of the rivers and of Breydon, each of which pumped up the water with a huge wheel, that lifted it from the levels to a high- built sluice opening into the waterways. At low tide the sluice gates were opened, and the water escaped. These old mills date back many years ; one of them, still in excellent condition, dates, I believe, from 1732. But many of the tower mills have fallen out of use of late years, and only two or three remain to cast their shadows into Breydon. Dan Banham's mill, standing a mile beyond my 6 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY houseboat, and towering up conspicuously from any point of view, is a good type of the old pump-mill ; but even this works little when winds are lazy, for there is attached to it an engine that will work more effectually when necessary. Indeed, most of the mills in Broadland give way to steam pumping when an excess of rain has fallen, while many have entirely fallen into disuse ; for one good turbine pump will do the work of a dozen windmills. The marshes have naturally settled through this system of drainage. At one time they were part and parcel of the fast diminishing " ronds " or saltings of Breydon ; but now they have become shrunken and solidified to much below their original level. A big tide on Breydon is sometimes some feet above the level of the marshes on the inner side of the wall. The wild birds have not appreciated this alteration, for many of the lower forms of life which allured them have been lost, or have been much reduced in numbers. Many long stretches of the walls have been faced with huge flints to save erosion ; a few, where the tides are sluggish, are fronted with salt-loving herbage; but year by year the flints have been added to, and these need replacing at intervals. Even these will all, in time, be faced with concrete, and at recent mending times long stretches have already been stuccoed by rough concrete spread over the jagged flints, filling up interstices, and making an enduring rampart. The walls are sufficiently wide at the apex to form a toler- able footpath, muddy enough in wintry days, and wearisome in summer and autumn, when the long wiry grasses close over the footway. But a ramble along them is always an interest- ing experience, except on ordinary November days, or any- thing like them, for shelter is out of the question. After rain or heavy dews the wet grasses soak the boots of the pedes- trian. The Sea Milkwort (Glaux maritime?) grows in abundance on the inner sides of the walls, and the Sea Aster (Aster tripolium) shoots out of the clay that holds the huge rough flints in place. The Sea Southern wood, the Scurvy Grass, and the creeping Chenopodiums variegate the banks ; a few stretches of stunted reeds, dwarfed by the salinity of the ditches, struggle for existence, growing larger as one nears the Burgh end, until a little way up the rivers, where fresh water runs longest, they overshadow one's boat by their ten-foot-long stems. BREYDON 7 The saltings or " ronds," that at one time fronted long stretches of the walls, have grown less and less as the years and the waves have rolled by ; and there remains but one of any extent — Duffell's rond, on the narrowest portion of which my old houseboat Moorhen rests. The crumbling away of the saltings, added to the silt from the rivers eddying on to the flats, has made Breydon " grow up " fast and surely ; and one or two other causes contributing to this — to the Breydoners — disastrous result will be noted in the later chapters. Breydon, to my mind, looks charming from any standpoint. I have viewed it with admiration from the parish church steeple, from which one sees it spread like a lagoon of silver. Looking down Breydon from Berney Arms, when the full tide is flowing, one sees a noble lake divided, not exactly in the middle, by two long rows of " stakes," (the larger division on the left) : the water shallows abruptly over the flats, as it does on the right of the red-painted guide-posts. The others are tarred. Along the channel, between stakes, glide white- sailed yachts, and laden wherries, "hulled" on the actual pattern of the ships of the old sea-kings, race merrily along, impelled by their huge, high-peaked sails. If the wind be free they make easy work of it ; if not fair, they tack smartly from side to side, gaining on each board, with more picturesque action. And here and there, like tiny torpedo-boats, speed the punts of the eel-babbers and the open boats of the smelters. The variations in cloud and sky are intensified in the waters of Breydon, and the lover of the beautiful sees here a never- ending, ever-changing panorama with fine "effects." The sunsets, viewed from the townward end, are not surpassed in England. The outlook changes every hour. On fine days, even at low tide, when the flats are bare, amazing coloura- tions— greens, browns, and golden — are seen at dawn and sunset ; and at no season are they altogether unlovely. And when the sun has set, and the stars see themselves reflected in the cool depths ; when the moon flings her radiance on rippling water and moist ooze ; there is yet something, to charm and enthral one. Enough has been said of the charms of Breydon. Those who would view them at their best should choose the sunnier days, and make sure before starting that the flood-tide is " making," for everything seems then full of life and beauty. 8 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY A tide-table stands at the foot of the Haven Bridge, on the south side, on whose clock-like faces the times of each high water at the bar for the day are noted. Allow one hour later for Breydon. A walk to Burgh on the five and a half miles zigzag of " walls," on fine days, is interesting ; and an examination of the grey ruins of the old Roman walls will repay the journey thither. A good pair of field-glasses will interest the stroller as he journeys. The north side of Brey- don affords quite another aspect. One should make for the tollgate near Vauxhall Station, pay a halfpenny, walk along the New Road as far as the second gate beyond the first half a right-angle turn in the road, cross the two gates, the narrow bit of marsh, and the railway, in spite of the notice board, and then ramble on in a westerly direction to Berney Arms. A noon train usually starts for Norwich, passing Berney Arms, and setting down passengers if required. It is a fourpenny ride to this one-man railway station, which is separated by two marshes and three gates from Berney Arms, a quaint, cheer- less alehouse, that draws more than half a barrel per fortnight, and supplies any who ask for them with a jug of coffee and rich, sweet cheese and bread, or allows the visitor to munch his own refreshments. A chat with the natives, and the smelters one sees here, is always a source of interest, and not infrequently of amusement. The walk home is by no means uninteresting or tedious. The huts of the smelters and the wildfowlers dot the monotonous level with bits of colour. There is one Breydon picture, framed in a circle of verdure, that always bewitches me. To enjoy a view of it I start by tram from Southtown Bridge, getting off at the Boundary Road, a mile journey. From here a three-miles' walk across the bridle paths and through country lanes, from which glimpses of Breydon may be snatched at intervals, finds one on the edge of the old estuary. On reaching Burgh church a right-angle turn is made down-hill, and Berney Arms and the confluence of the rivers Yare and Waveney lie before one. If a wherry and a yacht or two are passing at this moment a most beautiful picture is presented. A few yards from Burgh church is the Roman well, where one may refresh himself; and the ruins of the Camp are but a hundred yards farther on. Pursuing the right turn one comes to Breydon walls, along which one may ramble back to Yarmouth. NORTH SEA . .- , .. BREYDON ii Should any ornithologist seek to get afloat on Breydon, there are several punters — Breydoners au naturel — who may be found near their shelter on the Suspension Bridge Quay — or the watcher may be arranged with ; while a friend of mine, named Halls, who keeps a motor-boat moored at Cob- holm, is ever ready to " show " Breydon under pleasant and agreeable conditions. CHAPTER II WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON FICKLE WINTER WINTER is ushered in on Breydon often long before dreary November has counted up thirty gloomy days. It sometimes steals upon us in the dull, lifeless fog, shortening the already fleeting days, making the damp nights hideous, and the silence oppressive and mournful, as the occasional clangour of the Bell buoy, far out in the roadstead, reverberates across dark dancing wave and maram-clad sand-dune. And the solitary wildfowler, moored in his snug little houseboat in a sheltered creek in the saltings, taking a last look around him, seeing nothing, and hearing only the clamour of a parcel of wigeon busy on the "grass" at supper-time, and the bleat of the lightship fog- horn, slams to his cabin-door, puts a bit more coal on the fire, and thanks his lucky stars that he is not among those away yonder manning the " ships that pass in the night." Now and again grim winter bursts upon us with gale and flood, churning up the tide as it forces its way up against the wild north-wester, until the muddy waves roll across the flats in dirty, foam-tipped lines, that spend their fury on each other in the channel, or beat up fitfully and broken in a baffled melee upon the sturdy flint walls, tossing up with their last futile effort the wreckage of the torn Zostera, and the flotsam that quieter tides bore upstream and deposited among it. Sometimes the storm breaks adrift the huge rafts of timber, and flings big balks disdainfully with the lighter flotsam ; and the wild sea-bird, ill at ease on land or sea, tosses wildly above head, finding no rest for the sole of her foot on the submerged mudflats, and wearied with her fishing in the hollows of the sea waves. 12 WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 13 The moods of winter on this great tidal water are many, and Breydon must be visited day after day to see them all. There is the bright, crisp, frosty morning, when the air is keen, and hoar-frost sparkles on the grass-topped walls, and glitters on the ragged fish-basket left by the tide on the rond below. Then there comes the day of drizzle and rain-storm, with big, cumbrous, leaden clouds, molten and chilling, driving before the west wind like floating continents, dented and broken and rifted sometimes with peaks, and capes, and mountains of snowy white and sickly yellow. On such days the very crows wear a more bedraggled air as they skulk along by the " walls," seeking a dinner of carrion, and the gulls sit hunched up on the flats with a woe-begone air. Then the snow-time comes in a wall of cloud with which the north wind covers up all Nature, as with a pall, and one cannot see beyond the fleecy fringing that surrounds him. Such are the days one experiences on Breydon from the time that winter steals on us till its reluctant departure in boisterous March. IN FOGGY WEATHER On a foggy day we take our first ramble along the southern wall. The slight frost of the morning has been succeeded by a raw and chilling wind that drove in the fog-bank ; and the apex of the wall has softened into greasy mud that burdens our feet with layer upon layer of sticky clay, and which, in spite of the moisture on the wall-grasses, refuses to be brushed off. On our right is the channel, whose farther- most side we can but dimly discern : on our left the marshes are soon lost in the grey gloom. A fieldfare or two are dis- consolately hopping among the fresh-cast mole-heaps for any stray beetle which may have hastened upwards at the mole's coming; and an occasional meadow-pipit darts from the ditch-side on seeing us, twittering its surprise or displeasure at being disturbed from its quest of the Sphceromidce or Hydrobia which are clinging to ditchweeds, or climbing the broken reed-stems in their seemingly purposeless peregrina- tions. The wall-rats — the vilest of a vile race, which make their home in the banks of Breydon, and seek their living on the i4 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY carrion that floats to them— run their burrows upward for fear of inundation and, for convenience, burrow out on the inner and grassy side, for the sake of the fresher water in the ditches. You will observe their runs, leading from their burrows to the ditch-side, worn into well-defined tracks, so rounded that you might run a cricket ball down as truly as you see the ball gliding in a draper's cash-ladder. Out of one of the burrows is sticking a handful of black feathers — the tail and wing-feathers of a hapless rook. Some " walk- ing" gunner wanted to empty his old muzzle-loader yester- day ; he did not wish to return with it loaded, as a damp charge might on the morrow lose him a chance at a wigeon or a plover. The rook, unfortunately, came within range and fell a victim to his aim and heartlessness, tumbling down a bunch of bleeding flesh and broken feathers, — " like a bunch of rags " he described it ; and the sportsman (?) left it where it fell, complimenting his fowling-piece, and blessing his deadly aim. A rat in a burrow hard by heard the shot, and knew its purport ; he licked his paws, peered out of his hole, and later on mustered up courage and came out. He had before connected these strange noises with good suppers thereafter ; and if he knew any local saws one of them must have been "You never know your luck"! He was hunting the walls with the perseverance of a stoat — which now and again hunts rats in turn — when a puff of wind ruffled the wing of the rook, and his keen eye saw it. To run up and seize his prize was the matter of a moment, and a few minutes' labour brought it to his burrow. He could not drag it in, so he bit through the neck, and took the head down ; then he came up again and set to work upon the carcase. Why prolong the inferences? We lift up the remains by one wing and find scarcely a particle of muscle left on the breast and leg and wing-bones. The "rond," or "salting," as they call it elsewhere, is covered with the colourless remnants of the Sea Scurvy-grass (Cochlearia officinalis}. It seems strange, but linnets and larks appear to be partial to this semi-marine herbage in the winter, and flocks of them often frequent it. We put up several of either species as we stumble along. From a bunch of woolly-crowned Michaelmas daisies a dozen or more snow- buntings take to wing with soft piping notes of protest, and WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 15 settle on the marsh behind us : they will come again to the lettuce-like seeds, as soon as we are deemed far enough off for safety. On the " low " in the rond the downy seed-tufts are wheeling about like tiny ships in a whirlwind. They have not fulfilled their mission, which was to take the seeds with them, and drop them anywhere where the wind might pitch them, or the waves fling them up. In autumn the ronds and walls are gay with the bright purple Aster. We will go as far as "Stone Corner," a projecting point of the walls which marks the end of the tide-worn rond. The fog is becoming denser, and a short stroll must suffice to-day; we do not expect to see many birds, for the flats are hidden, and the few birds that may be haunting them are silent ; even the gulls seem as gloomy as the atmosphere. There are some lapwings calling on the marsh, but we do not see them ; they are simply piping to keep their fellows in touch with them, and comparing notes. A patch of white on the bit of water-worn rond attracts attention, and our binoculars are at once levelled at it. It is unmistakably a gull, to all appearances a large " grey," the immature of the saddle-backed gull. On closer inspection we can detect a rat at work upon it, and — indeed a second one, for they fall to sparring — a pair of ghouls quarrelling over the dead ! The death of that bird we may safely place to some sportsman's (?) credit : it was not killed outright, but " fell away " badly wounded, and dropped in the channel, to die miserably, and be cast up by the tide and wind. On jumping a narrow drain, we land on the rond and come up to the carcase ; the rats, watching our movements, have bolted to their burrows in the walls. The gull lies on its back, a bunch of bones, with scattered feathers lying around it. More than the two rats have been busy upon it, for it is quite fresh — the bones, picked bare, are still red. The sternum is enough clean- picked for a specimen, while the vertebrae of the neck, and the skull, are entirely divested of flesh, even the eye-sockets being emptied. So well do the brutes clean up their dishes. The afternoon is waning, and the fog gives place to a nasty drizzle : on our way back we are enabled to see across the flats. And what a concourse of gulls do we discover : not- withstanding the unpleasant atmosphere, we are tempted to sit down on the stone wall — having first spread an India- 16 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY rubber apron on the edge of it — and watch for a little while their doings. Some of the ancient flints are gay with lichens, many of them creeping into the chinks and crannies of the concrete. Here is the beautiful orange-coloured Placodium muvorum, and the grey Lecanora galactina, or something closely allied to it. These thrive well on this exposed " mile point," notwithstanding their frequent deluging by the salt scud from the waves flung by the strong nor'-wester. Let me refer to my entry respecting the manoeuvring of the gulls in front of us : — "Nov. \Qth, 1906. — An immense concourse of gulls, in three detachments, covering a large area of the flats. One lot, which consisted mainly of greater black-backs, nearly all adult, spread over at least half an acre — there were probably 1500 individuals gathered there. There was an easterly breeze blowing, and all three squadrons sat, or rather stood, facing the wind. At four o'clock (their usual time), after some amount of chatter, a bunch of a hundred flew up, making still more noise, and then mounted in the air, and sped seawards, forming a perfect V as they fell into line. Scattered birds kept drawing up to the main flocks, some from the far end of Breydon. How conspicuously they 'loomed up' against the sombre background of drab flats and grey, lowering sky ! Presently, before the first lot had entirely disappeared in the distance, another contingent, in like manner, rose as at some well-understood signal, and followed the others in V-shaped flight. Thus went flock after flock to their night's repose on the sea, and to their early morning's attendance on the herring-nets, until by dusk they had all disappeared, to return to-morrow to the flats to sleep off their surfeit of herrings, when hunger would again set them prowl- ing on the mudflats, or on the marshlands, to repeat at even- tide the same evolutions. There were at least 6000 gulls of various ages and species — probably 7000. It is a matter of general observation that the recent years of pro- tection have tended greatly to the increase of the larger gulls." i The lights of the town twinkle hazily in the downpour as we reach home. 1 Extract from my notebook. WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 17 IN TIME OF STORM Years of constant observation help the field naturalist to make, at times, very satisfactory forecasts. The colour of the water passing up-river, the force of the current, the altered rumble of the surf on the seashore, and the movements of birds are all an index, plainly printed, to him who cares to read it. The month of November, 1897, was a remarkably foggy one and, until the end of it, a placid one. On the night of the 24th I observed a movement among wading birds, and heard the golden plover plaintively crying over- head in the darkness. I noted in my log this fact, with that of the flocking, next day, of the smaller gulls to the river to feed, both denoting, as I remarked, " rain — and bad weather close at hand." On the 28th, a most disastrous gale and flood followed : it blew for four and twenty hours, the sea breaking through the sandhills at Horsey,1 and licking away enormous masses of the cliffs, while tide upon tide, without an ebb between, rushed furiously up Breydon, twirling huge timbers as if they had been straws, and flooding houses (among them my own), warehouses, and wharves. I did my best damming and banking doorways and drains, but to no purpose, for the sea-water percolated and oozed through soil and crevice. Disgusted, I went up Breydon walls to my houseboat ; it was a fine but wild scene as the waters raced, frothing, seeth- ing, and tumbling, up the estuary. They beat in fantastic waves on the walls, whose apex they all but reached, flinging the spray in a feathery shower over on to the marshes, while through rat burrows and cracks in the dyke trickled miniature tinkling streams. Small flocks of belated knots and dunlins flew wildly round, seeking in vain for a flat on which to rest and feed ; the seagulls had given up the search and gone inland. I had to walk bent almost double. I saw a female eider duck, driven from its northern home, seeking shelter under the lee of the wall near my houseboat ; I could have reached it with a fishing-rod. A marshman also saw it, ran for his gun, and promptly killed it. Some snow-buntings and larks fitfully sneaked about at marsh corners, as unhappy 1 The breach has been patched up — but for how long? i8 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY as the knots. A poor little guillemot, blown to the marshes, had been discovered and mutilated by a rat. On the further side of Breydon I could see the waves breaking furiously on the walls where they ran broadside to the wind, and great sheets of water, with frothy borders, were flung over on to the grassy levels behind. Houseboats, float- ing high above the level of their protecting saltings, tossed like ships at anchor ; the eel-fishers and smelters were safe in port at the quayside taverns, or in sheltered corners near their beloved Breydon, discussing bygone gales and floods, com- paring notes and figures of past hauls, " cursing their luck " at being kept ashore, whilst they "blessed their lucky stars" that they were not afloat in cockleshell punt and smelt-boat. Were they given to reading Dickens, these men would can- onise Mark Tapley. The wind howled when it rushed among the telegraph wires on the railway, flinging here and there a pole and a signal post across the metals. One post went down as a train came along and the engine cut clean through it. The houses of the marsh farmers lost many a tile, and tops of many haystacks were roughly shorn off, and the hay scattered like feathers. It took me an hour to plough through the blast to the Moorhen. We oftener get high tides and floods up-river now, for the wasting of the cliffs lying north of Yarmouth allows a sharper set-in of the North Sea currents, and, as I pointed out in a local paper, " Our Commissioners are playing a dangerous game in so eagerly (and constantly) deepening the Harbour mouth." To this lament and others of mine, a well- known county man and an ardent angler replied : — " On the gale and high tide I beg to say I am entirely of your opinion. The cupidity of your townsmen will in time swamp your now flourishing watering-place. The continual deepening of Yarmouth Bar lets the tide run up with such a force that any gale from the N.W., with the water low in the river, is bound to swamp everything. For the sake of increased harbour dues the place will in time be wiped out. The salt water comes up the river now so far with every N.W. wind that fishing (angling) in the lower reaches, as at Cantley and at Reedham, is now quite a failure. . . ." The pressure of a huge influx of water found out a weak place in the walls at the Berney Arms end of Breydon, on WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 19 December 23rd, 1894. A heavy north-west gale had been blowing all the previous day, and two flood tides, without an ebb between them — i.e. one tide following in the wake of the other, there having been no intermediate fall — piled up Brey- don four or five feet above the level of the marshes behind. The water filtered through a weak spot that had been over- looked by the tenant of the marshes, whose business it was to watch eventualities, and be prepared against them ; an ever- increasing volume of water poured in, until a huge gap was torn, and hundreds of thousands of tons of salt water swept into the marshes, first filling the ditches, and then flooding many acres before the tide began to fall again. But before another tide could add to the inundation, steps had been made to remedy the breach, and the pump-mills were set going night and day, flinging the water back again. Curiously enough, while the gale was at its height, great flocks of lap- wings were seen coming in from over the North Sea — dead beat (as they always arrive) by flying at more than right- angles to the wind, as is their wont on migration. These settled in the lowlands, being attracted by the pervading moisture, and the millions of worms that came to the surface to die of the salts. To their hosts were added huge flocks of various gulls that made the marshlands white with seafowl, and that reminded ancient marsh-dwellers of the days of their youth, when similar sights were far less infrequent. The usual onslaughts were made by the gunning fraternity, and many a wretched lapwing never saw the new year. It snowed four hours without ceasing on December 3Oth, and Breydon and the surrounding marshes were seen under quite another aspect, to the delight of those devoted to gun- ning pursuits. My notebook at this time refers to numbers of little auks1 coming to grief, flocks of sheld-ducks, scaups, scoters, wigeon, pochards, golden eyes and others being driven into the neighbourhood. I went to Burgh Castle on January /th (1895), and saw astonishing numbers of gulls and lapwings still congregated on the opposite marshes, not yet tired of their diet of earthworms. As for ducks — " the oldest inhabitant" in Belton whom I interviewed, notwithstanding his many winters' experiences, said "he'd never known so many knockin' about in that neighbourhood afore." 1 Notes of an East Coast Natiiralist, p. 1 1. 20 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY A RIME FROST A spell of sharp frost, with slight snowfalls and a smart wind from the north-east, ushered in the year 1894, and for some days the neighbourhood put on one of its old-time aspects, wild birds of various species thronging the coast,1 inducing many an old sportsman who had not smelt powder for years to indulge once more in the pastime of shooting. The Broads were frozen over, and Breydon assumed an arctic appearance. On January 7th, a dense rime frost had scattered the "hoar- frost like ashes" over the face of Nature. Few persons went to church that day, and fewer still went to look upon Brey- don ; for except near the " Lower Run," and in the channel nearer home, it was a vast field of ice. The outlook on the marshes, as I strode briskly up the New Road, was wintry enough to suit the most exacting. There was a strange stillness everywhere, broken only by the merry laughter of some clumsy skaters on the distant ditches. Not a breath of wind rustled among the remnants of last year's reeds, which lined the wide ditch on our right, and their few tufted heads hung heavily with the weight of hoar-frost upon them. The ragged willows that then still held up their branches were beautiful now in their garments of white, and the lichens on their gnarled trunks had been touched as if by fairy fingers. A meadow-pipit, with melan- choly cheep, fluttered from under the stubbly banks, cheepmg again to one of his fellows when he overtook him, as if deploring his want of luck, and asking him how many hidden insects he had fallen in with. I cautiously crossed one of the brackish ditches, and the ice, pierced here and there by reed-stubble, bore me safely; then clambering over a marsh gate and the railway metals, I found myself on Breydon walls. A couple of skylarks were snapping off the brittle grass-bents beside a frozen marsh puddle, their feathers puffed out for extra warmth ; they were certainly happier than a snail-loving thrush that hopped inquisitively up to them, as if to compare notes and ask a favour of them. Larks seldom find themselves dinnerless in 1 Vide Nature in Eastern Norfolk^ p. 60. WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 21 the fiercest winter, — there are cabbages, anyway, that can always be had for the looking for, and which, besides, provide famous shelter. My boots crisply brushed off the frost dust from the thistle-stems, the remnants of the goosefoot, and the clinging wall-grasses as I strode along. The tide was near the full and heaved, as if sighing, under the rough mantle of ice upon the bosom of Breydon, while the creases in her vesture were marked here and there by the swollen " drains," over which the ice lay thinner and weaker, and crackling. Their sinuous windings were lost in the rimy atmosphere which joined, as it were, with the grey ice in a close and indistinct horizon ; range of vision was limited at most to a hundred paces. The sun, like a disc of Naples yellow, seemed to be trying to pierce the chilly curtain ; it looked dully bright, as one sees it through smoked glass. Scarcely a sound broke on the still air, save an occasional sharp crackling of ice, the weird cry of some bewildered bird, and the yet rarer boom of a fowling-piece, which left one sur- mising whether a coot, or a wigeon, or a tufted duck had fallen to, or had escaped the shooter. A large gull loomed up indistinctly, as one sees a noctule bat at eventide ; it vanished as imperceptibly. A chaffinch, bright and saucy, settled for a moment upon a straggling willow stick thrust out from a broken fish-swill, adding by his presence the finishing touch to an artistic tit-bit I could not help admiring — the dilapi- dated basket, with its ragged fringe of weed, thrown by the tide against a gnarled stake upon which the frost had drawn leaves and foliage of white, together with some loose flint- stones from the wall, in the hollows of which bright orange and yellow lichens were growing, formed a background to the picture. A fitting tail-piece, I thought, for any sketch of a frost-bound estuary. Some footprints upon the whitened surface of the ditch, below the walls, described to me how that morning some roving spaniel had been out sporting with his master. Look- ing more closely at them I observed that they zigzagged in conformity with some tinier " spoor " ; these dotted imprints, and a fine-drawn line between them, told how the dog had followed the perambulations of a rat. The footprints of the rat suddenly turned at a right angle and ended in the wall, the dog's continuing alone. A hooded crow had left his 22 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY broad- arrowed claw-marks part of the way — he too had been searching for a rat, but as vainly. The thinner trail of a lark, and the still finer one of a pipit, were also visible. On the ice, a little way from the walls, some crow-marks interested me much more greatly. One spot was dotted with tiny grey feathers, and leading up to them were the imprints of a " hoodie's " feet. A poor little dunlin, " wounded unto death," had flown hither in its death-agony from among a host of its companions, slain by a merciless gunshot. Its life's blood ebbed out, staining the snowy patch with bright crimson ; it had died alone on the icy carpet, and the little form had stretched wings and legs, and stiffened directly. Not long did it lie there, for a scouting Kentish crow, prowl- ing around for a breakfast, espied the dead bird ; those claw- printss to the right show the spot where he alighted. He walked half a dozen paces, then a confused trampling tells us how he set to work with claws and mandibles, and tore to pieces the poor little sandpiper. Bill and foot and wing are all devoured, save the long flight feathers which he hurriedly pulled out, and a few smaller ones, dropped in his eager haste, for a brother crow may have been ready to rob him ; these are all the evidences left of an avine tragedy. Trending a little way from the spot are other footmarks of the crow, leading to where the foul bird took to wing again. A little further on I noticed more bloodstains, and a number of other footprints ; but, in this instance, not a feather remained. How was this? Closer attention con- vinced me that more than one "hoodie" came to claim the victim. There were ample proofs that there were three. It was very evident too, that, disturbed at his meal almost as soon as he had discovered it, crow number one had snatched up his prize and hurried away with it, hoping to devour it alone. Among the wall-flints I found a fowl ; its bones had been picked clean, and feathers lay scattered about on the stones among which stricken pochard and wigeon like to hide when fatally wounded. It had evidently been dragged out, and the wingbones alone remained feathered ; even the muscular por- tions of the wings had been dragged off and swallowed, and by some well-defined teeth-marks it was easy to see that the rats had gnawed off what little the careful crows had over- looked. WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 23 The rime frost still hung about thickly when I set off homewards, and the tide was falling. Already some of the flats had drained dry, and the ice had settled on them in broken hummocks, whose edges pointed at various angles. On approaching the North Wall drain I found open water, and the ebb was drawing downstream floe after floe of broken ice. Now one floe would catch in the mud, stop a moment, and then turning, swing again into the tide-way, dashing into another stranded floe with a loud, crackling crash ; then the two floes would go on together, splintering, crackling, and sweeping down towards the channel, to con- tinue grating against others coming down with the tide. Now one would catch its edge over another and slide well on to it with a roar, as if at some rough play ; then endways up it would go and bury itself in the dark waters, coming up under another as if possessed with the spirit of mischief. One huge floe would crash against one of the stakes, shaking it to its foundations in the ooze below, breaking itself in halves, the severed portions joining forces again directly in the eddy. And so downward to the sea sped acres of broken ice-slabs. In a wake, among the floating ice, swam and dived a poor little dabchick, struggling now for its life, and forgetting its struggle for a dinner; wishing summer days back again, no doubt, and hours of peace and plenty in the Broadland reed-clumps. A few dunlins were running wonderingly along on the denuded edge of a mudflat. They were hard pressed for food, for the mudworms had sunk lower into the ooze ; it may be there were some to be found that the moving ice had scooped out, and left to freeze in their nakedness. One wretched bird whose right leg had been shot away hopped about pitifully, probing here and there for a morsel. A few black-headed gulls were hanging round the mouth of the Bure, snatching up fragments floating upon the surface of the sewage- polluted water. It is about our own noontide ; and our interesting excur- sion has ended. 24 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY IN DAYS OF YORE Snow was falling one evening in winter when a worn-out old punt-gunner, at one time one of the most ardent sports- men on Breydon, sat by my own bright fireside. " Breydon is done for ! " said he ; and nothing is truer from an old punt- gunner's point of view, for the best season in their day was our present Close Season, when a few birds, good and rare, still drop in among the mudflats ; and the days of big shots in the winter-time are probably for ever gone, for Breydon under its altered conditions does not " harbour them " as it did fifty and sixty years ago. "The winters are different," remarked the old man. His opinion is shared by many men who in their younger days " followed " Breydon ; and they will describe in vivid language " those days of ice and . snow." On further inquiry, and reference also to past records, I am led to believe that extremely severe winters only obtained at intervals, usually of several years, as they have done since I myself have chronicled events ; and on consideration, when certain winters, e.g. 1854-5, 1870-1, etc., have been brought to the old gunners' recollection, they have admitted " it may have been so." ;• "Be that as it may," said Pestell, "you may get a hard winter,and you 'on't get the birds like you useter ; theer ain't the feed, and the water is no suner on the flats than 'tis off again; and if any of 'em do stop there there ain't enough water for you to get your punt to 'em. They sit and laugh at you. Fifty year ago I'm speakin' of — sixty year — why a wherry could sail over the flats at high water from wall to wall, and some parts, what are now dry at less 'an half ebb, were then never free of water. Even in the sixties old brents (geese) used to come fifty and sixty in a bunch to Breydon in hard weather. "We used to get a tremenjuss lot of pokers (pochards); they used to come in and feed by scores on the poker-grass what used to grow against the north side, right away from the * Fleet' to 'Rotten Eye'; you could see 'em pullin' and tuggin' at it, eatin' the little white peas on it.1 Pokers are the "Poker-grass" was described by Pestell and two or three other old gunners as a kind of " tangle-grass " ; it bore white flowers, which "turned to peas"; and all admitted that " pokers gobbled 'em up." Eels used to lie in its labyrinths. It was probably a species of Potamogeton, but is now quite extinct here. WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 25 sharpest fowl you ever see ; they ' dove ' the moment they saw the flash of your powder, and as for gettin' a wounded one, well, it gave you a sweatin' — they used wings and feet, and would sooner drown'd than let you get 'em. " I once," said Pestell, " got a shot at some pokers after a hard row through ' slub ' (half-frozen) ice, and havin1 coU lected 'em, I found it had got so hard I couldn't get back to the channel again. " The ice formed on the oars as I paddled. My ice-pick was too short to be any use, but I had my eel-pick on a long shaft in the boat ; this I laid hold of, and chopped and pushed my way out of it. The ice had so gathered on the boat, and what with that and ' stock ice ' risin' from below with the weeds and stuff on it, gave me a pretty good doing to gettin' home ! " I once see the most beautiful white nun — smew, you know— secured in the harbour on a piece of floatin' ice ; it couldn't fly, for its feet had got frozen in ! " Did I often see birds fast like that? Well, no; but it was nothin' uncommon to see wounded stints and sich-like small birds what had had legs broken by shot, with one of their feet in a reg'lar ball of ice — from dip, dip, dippin' them in the water, and the water freezin' on 'em." He had often had ice get to le'ward of him on the ebb, and, being caught and pushed back by the early flood, it had sur- rounded him, and escape had been impossible but for using his ice-hook — a rather heavier weapon than a boat-hook. He had seen too, as I have, the huge guiding stakes in the channel lifted bodily by the ice clinging around them, drawn as the tide lifted, and carried away. Five shillings was the reward given by the River Commissioners, who claimed them* Sport had been slack for some days on Breydon (this was in the /o's) . " It blowed terrific one day, and well into the night," said Pestell. " I dropt into the Pleasure Boat tavern for a game of * crib.' Comin' home late, I noticed the wind had suddenly dropt. I'd got to hear that a tremenj.uss lot of fowl had gone to Breydon, so, to my missus's surprise, I put on my things, and told her I was goin' up. I shoved off and pulled against a ragin' ebb, makin' for the houseboat then lying near the Stone Corner. Half-way up Duffell's drain, I stuck in an oar, 26 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY thinkin' to have a rest, and, of course, a smoke ; and what d'yer think? — to my surprise, on strikin' a fusee on the breech of the gun, with a terrific whir and whiz, hundreds of fowl took to wing all around me. They'd been quietly feedin'. I went to the houseboat and waited till the tide began to lift, and then pushed off to see if they'd kinder settled again. By the aid of my glasses I could see two or three ' ridges ' loomin' up black against the light of the town, and made towards these, puttin' up several single fowl within almost oar's length as I went along, frightenin' them, of course, by the hissin' noise on the sides and bottom of the boat rubbin' against the shells {Hydrobiadce) on the grass (Zostera). I ventured a shot at one of the thick black ridges, and guessin' my aim by the elevation of the gun, pulled the trigger. " Well, 'bor, what with the roar of the gun, and the rattle and clamour of their wings and throats, I thought for a minute the world had come to an end ! I stuck an oar into the mud, and hung my oily frock on to it to mark the position, and tried to find the fowl, but was baffled by the darkness and tide. Early in the morning, though, I fell in with the fowl I'd shot, which amounted to a score wigeon and mallard ! " Ah ! we useter get big shots sometimes ; you see, the birds useter come in such flocks that you couldn't help hitting 'em. I once saw a tremenjuss lot of stints (dunlins) sittin' huddled up on a huge floatin' piece of ice ; I had some difficulty in gettin' to it through the pack as was floating all round, but I did, somehow, and pulled trigger. I managed to recover two hundred and eighty-five of them, and what is more, I got five wigeon at the same shot, as was sittin' on a hummock a little way behind 'em. Of course, it wasn't easy to get all the cripples, and I didn't. I remember how the Kentish crows chased 'em as they hopped and fluttered about — them wounded ones. Brutal, you say? Well, them sort of thoughts never useter trouble me. What's the differs be- tween that and calf-stickin' ? Don't both butchers do it for what they can make of their slaughter ? " I can well remember, as a lad let loose from school, how I used to haunt the quayside approaches to Breydon, looking curiously into the snow-sprinkled punts, and viewing with wonder the dead fowl lying on the bottom-boards, or spread on the foredeck. .-. . «,, I ' . - I • • "•v* > y i :•-; -./ WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 29 " Ah, 'bor," said he, " I remember gettin' a shot at a parcel of wigeon, baggin' sixteen of 'em. I laid 'em on the fore- peak (covered deck), thinkin' 'em all dead. I went ashore to reload my gun, and stood potterin' about waitin' for another shot. One of the ducks that had laid beneath the heap of others came to, fully an hour after I shot 'em, and up on the wing she went. I happened to have my ' hand-gun ' under my arm, and up with it, catchin' a glimpse of the fowl as it got between me and the moon, I fired and killed it dead ! " It wasn't nothin' new to lose birds after you'd shot 'em ; the cripples fluttered away even in broad daylight, and you couldn't get over the ice after them, and as for shootin' at night, why, we old gunners often used to shoot at the sound of birds we couldn't see, and trusted to luck to hit 'em and retrieve 'em. You remember me tellin' you about how them wigeon hid in the flint wall?1 But them old crows (hooded) used to annoy me. I once shot a mallard that fluttered ashore on the flat with a broken wing, and before I could break through the ice at the edge of it to get the bird, a parcel of hoodies seized it, tore out its eyes, and had its innerds out while still alive. I got it, however, but it wasn't saleable." The old man chatted on, sometimes going over his ground again, but to me his yarn was never tiresome, and to my mind it was altogether reliable ; for he and others whom I have interviewed, and helped in times of stress, have never tried the long bow on me. A pipe of tobacco makes them reminiscent, and they are tempted to lie only — if they do at all — when they scent drink. Pestell was much interested in pochards, and he added scaups — "hard fowl," he designated them — for, as hard as nails himself (he had served his time as an artilleryman and as a boatbuilder), he delighted in the snow and frost that brought them south. He was emphatic in assuring me "pokers" and scaups, when wounded or hard pressed, would dive and hang by their feet to the " grass," preferring to drown rather than be captured, although the probability is that they sometimes got fast unwittingly in the " tangle," or as likely, when in the thick of it, submerged themselves, having only their bills out of the water for the purpose of breathing. 1 Nature in Eastern Norfolk^ p. 43. 3o WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY He knew the ruffs in his younger days. " Them with the frills on ? " said he. " Oh, yes ! I've seen 'em dancin' and caperin' about on the flats afore now ; but that was yeers ago. I've shot into bunches of reeves in September [probably birds of mixed sexes and ages], once at a lot of at least sixty : they must have been bred in the Eastern Counties. Anyway, you never see two old birds coloured alike ! " He once saw a small hawk hanging around Breydon "chivying starlin's." He paid no particular attention to it, TIME! GENTLEMEN!" RUFFS FIGHTING but describing its appearance and colours to one of the Upchers, was told to try to secure it. " Why didn't you get it ? " said Upcher. " I'd have given you a tidy bit for it ! " This put P on the alert, and he observed it next morning just over the walls on the marshes, near " George's Deek." He hid himself in the grass, and watched the hobby doing its hardest to bag a starling. The starlings would open out as it made a swoop at them, continually baffling it. After a fruitless trial or two some crows dashed in [presumably] to the help of the starlings, to the great dis- comfiture of the hawk, who beat a retreat, and was not seen again. WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 31 Then the old chap, reloading his pipe, chuckled. Another reminiscence had come back to him. "I must be a-goin'," said he, "but I'll just tell you about old Steven Bowles/' and he laid down his pipe without light- ing it. " One bitter January mornin' — just such weather as this — I went up to the houseboat. I had a shot at a mallard as I went, but found on pickin' it up the shot had ploughed a wide strip clean, as if plucked, out of the breast feathers ; of course it wasn't saleable. So I thought I'd have it for dinner. I plucked it and cut it up, shovin' it in the saucepan for a stew. I shoved in an onion, and started to pepper it, when the lid dropped off the box — it was a smacksman's tin one, what held two or three ounces of pepper — and in it went ! I felt inclined to chuck the lot overboard, but a thought came into my head to have a bit of fun out of it. I know'd old Steven Bowles was likely to come up, so I let it bile. And presently through the snow loomed up old Stevey, cold as he could well be, and grumblin' about * bein' frozen to the marrow.' " ' Anything warm aboard ? ' axed Steve. " ' Stewed duck,' says I, balin1 out into a big basin a dollop of duck and gravy, what looked almost like duck biled in ink ! " Bein' persuaded it was all right, although of a rum colour, Steve proceeded to empty the soup down of his neck, amid much puffin' and blowin', and remarkin' on the heat of it. He only finished half the basin, and I couldn't persuade him to have more. He'd have hung his tongue out like a dog, but for fear of bein' frost-bitten. He bade me good mornin', and went on uppards. " I'll vow," said P , " he didn't feel the cold much more that day — and it was a raw 'un too." And P- laughed again ! The joke was rough and ready, but quite in keeping with the rough manners and hard life of the men and of Breydon. 32 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY SOME WINTER NOTES I have already suggested that hard winters were and are exceptional ; and my observations have led me to believe that, notwithstanding that the drainage of the marshes and other altered conditions have affected detrimentally many species, a set-in of sharp wintry weather, especially if it occurs in December, drives many common species hither in unusual abundance, and some usually rare ones in unexpected numbers ; among these may be cited mergansers, goosanders, smews, and various geese and swans, besides "hard fowl," e.g. tufted ducks, pochards, golden eyes, scaups, and occasion- ally long-tailed ducks. Many of these would remain in the lochs and firths of Northern Britain in milder seasons, and even farther north; but driven out by sharp and protracted frosts and snowstorms, they are compelled to venture south. In visiting Breydon at any season of the year, one must always be prepared for surprises and disappointments. Storms and other climatic influences regulate greatly the movements of many species : one day Breydon may present a miserably bare outlook, without a dunlin or a gull on its surface/and the next, when the visitor refrains from going because of expecting but a barren field, the flats may be alive with migrant waders, or some flock of strange fowl may have dropped in, and are feeding and resting there. The great snowstorm which occurred at the close of 1906 and the early days of 1907, and its effect on bird-life, will long remain fresh in my memory. I am amused sometimes by the prognostications of those who prophesy hard winters because of an abundance of hawthorn berries, or of gulls flying inland, and the like. It seems to me but natural that hawthorns, like apple trees, should, after a year's rest and unfruitfulness, bear well the following season, and that the birds should make short journeys for a change of food, or to avoid a breeze that might prove inconvenient to them. At the best, I can foresee but a few days' probabilities ahead : one gets to a certain extent weatherwise, like the old Breydoners, who spend much of their lives in the open, and are led by experience to prepare for eventualities. We may even suggest an intuitive WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 33 instinct in some minds, which cannot be explained. By reference to my notebooks, I find that hard winters, usually, only come at long intervals ; and I have many times observed that, unless we get heavy snows before the second or third week in December, we do not often get much after Christmas to worry over, and wildfowlers may expect a poor shooting season here for the remainder of the time. I made a few observations during the stress of the severe weather, and will give them as I have dated them : — "December 31^, 1906. — After a long spell of 'open' winters, something akin to ' the old-fashioned 'uns ' obtained during the last week of the year. On the 22nd it rained heavily, well into the night, and next day snow began to fall ; birds began to show signs of restlessness, and the black- headed gulls had been for two or three days feeding in the river, flying around the bridge in the heart of the town, a fairly good sign of a change ' of some sort ' coming. As an extraordinary tide will often come six hours ahead of a storm, it may be these birds instinctively judge by the tem- perature of the water, or by some faculty unknown to us. The morning of the 23rd dawned with a fiery glow in the west, which flooded the room as my wife opened the blinds. " ' We're in for something out of the common ! ' I remarked, and shortly the red glow cooled into grey, and from out the deepening gloom snow began to fall fast and furiously, and in right dead earnest. My first thoughts went out towards ' the poor birds ! ' — the birds that would die for want of food and by the hail of shot. " On the 22nd and 23rd flocks of various wildfowl were observed trooping along the foreshore southwards ; one bunch, presumably of duck and mallard, numbering quite 500 ; and a newspaper ' par ' (those mischievous little bulletins !) from Aldeburgh reported that * huge flocks of ducks, wild geese, wigeon and other fowl are continually passing south to sea- board, indicating a continuance of the present severe weather.' " Such sights and reports naturally set every owner, or friend's owner of a shoulder or punt-gun to work furbishing up his weapon, and laying in stores of ammunition ; local ironmongers were loading cartridges by day and by night ; and wild ducks began to fall to the guns of several frequenters of Breydon. Every amateur puntsman got afloat, and had I 34 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY been an excise officer I could have made a name by sorting over the regiment of those who, with every kind of gun imaginable, but mostly without gun licences, skulked around Breydon walls and marshes. On the 27th I went for a stroll to Gorleston Pier Head, having heard a report that some wild ducks "of a sort unknown" were to be seen inside the harbour; but I saw none. A few score small gulls were to be seen floating on the ebb tide near the North Sand just off the pier, all the larger gulls having gone — somewhere, and few indeed were seen here while the severity of the weather lasted. But I noticed a few thrushes (stray redwings and fZ 'if II H' DRIVEN SOUTH. REDWINGS MIGRATING their kindred), finches, and a pipit or two cross over the pier, almost within arm's length, in that steady purposeful manner peculiar to them during the normal period of immi- gration. On the 28th I went for a walk round, crossing the North Denes, sometimes wading through deep snowdrifts, now tumbling into them, and again progressing much after the fashion of a short-legged spaniel getting through deep grass, for the undulations and sudden breaks of the sand- dunes were hardly traceable ; and I finally reached the shore. Fortunately I felt in fairly good form. A few out-flying Turdidce and finches passed over me as I floundered through the snow ; but when I reached the beach, I found thrushes, fieldfares, redwings (in particular), larks, linnets, pipits, twites, and, indeed, incessores of all kinds, even including WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 35 goldfinches, flying due south, following the coast-line : silently, like the brown ghosts of birds, they flew — hour after hour — thousands upon thousands ! I wondered whence they were trooping and whether, but for stress, they would have still set at defiance the promptings that impelled many of their rela- tions, two months ago, on their migration southwards. Surely these were they who had landed in Scotland and would have stayed there ! Bunches of five, ten, twenty-, and fifty straggled and struggled along, odd birds, fagged right out, alighting now and then to rest awhile. They passed almost within arm's length, many of them. I could have caught them with a landing net ; and their line of flight lay between the sea-licked edge of the snowy plain and low-water mark, over a ribbon of clear sand some fifteen yards in width. The silent hosts opened on either side of me as might a regi- ment of infantry, as I walked north ; they did the same as I came back homewards, slightly closing their formation again as they proceeded ahead of me. Unfortunately the morning was gloomy, and my trusty Zeiss glasses a little too powerful for their nearness, so that had the smaller hosts contained rari- ties, they would have passed on unidentified. I longed to have my smaller " operas," but no gun ; for I abominate that spirit which leads to the slaughter of hosts of small migrants for the sake of (reputedly) adding a new species to a county's fauna. I would rather spend half my life among the mudflats and not know that some rare and new species of wader was watching me daily, than know and name it, if it meant my taking away the life it is as much entitled to as I am to mine ! Here the ichthyologist, however sentimental, scores, for all rare and most common fishes are caught more or less by acci- dent! He may sit all day, for years, angling from a rock, seeking in vain a Batistes capriscus^ and to-morrow it may be cast up on the shore by the scornful sea! Sua cuique voluptas ! The poor black-headed gulls fared badly enough ; they left Breydon en masse, and betook themselves to the lower reaches of the rivers. I surprised thirty or more of them by running unexpectedly — to them — up a river-bank, putting them to flight, for a short time, from ink-black sewage water running from a sewer outlet. These birds, too, swarmed the outlying gardens, and alighted on the public roads ; people 36 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY fed them from the bridges ; the kindly disposed spread for them table scraps on their very doorsteps in various parts of the town ; but more than one brute made target practice with them. One hapless bird would, or could, not make way for a cyclist, and was accidentally killed by his machine. Two or three times I visited Breydon walls during the continuance of the frost and snow, but being well aware of my need of self-restraint, I wisely, I think, kept off Breydon itself. Coots in miserable flocks slouched about on the mud- flats, demoralised by incessant slaughter among their ranks. Parcels of wildfowl flew affrightedly to and fro, for every man's gun was turned against them. " Strike " Sharman, a veteran Breydoner, remembering bygone winters, was tempted again to visit the mudflats, and came home with the foredeck of his punt covered with mallards and pochards. I visited his boat-shed on the 3oth, and saw a row of pochards and scaups lying on a bench. " That poor crested grebe," said he, " I picked up exhausted out of a hole in the ice ; the tide had fallen, it couldn't dive away, and it couldn't get on the wing." The poor old eel-pickers and other waterside "spaniels," frozen out from drains and channels, hung dejectedly around the quaysides, or crowded into their " shelter," bewailing the bad times and indulging in reminiscences of similar days in the long ago. On the 29th I had a look round the Saturday's market. On Edmond's (late Durrant's) game stall I saw a number of mallard and pochards, the latter still in the plumpest con- dition. A few common snipe hung there too ; they were fat enough, although not tempting eager purchasers, but scores (and hundreds of snipe later on) were turned away as thin and unsaleable. On the country-folk's stalls were numerous tufted ducks, pochards, and others. They had been having a fine time on some of the Broads (Hickling in particular), before the fowl were frozen out. Only one jack snipe was noticed in the whole market, but numerous bunches of field- fares, thrushes, blackbirds, and other small birds were on sale, and these found ready customers, which wildfowl did not. " So you've been killing your friends — the slug-eaters ? " WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 37 I remarked to a couple of different stall-keepers, touching the dead blackbirds with my finger. " Yow'd think 'em friends, 'bor," said one, " if yow was jist to see 'em among our fruit ! " " Yow'd think so, 'bor,v said the other, " if yow saw 'em in summer!" But neither could tell me where they got their fruit from in winter ; but so vindictiveness had slain them, and petu- lance was exhibited even in referring to them. And as blackbirds are esteemed uncommonly good eating in Yar- mouth, no mercy is ever shown them. On the 3Oth I called on Halls, an intelligent young engineer, and a good observer of bird-life, whose works over- shadow Breydon, and who in summer is ever ready, in motor launch or punt, to show visitors over this magnificent estuary, and who also follows Breydon with a big gun " when there's anything about." He was just sitting down to dinner after a week's wild life on Breydon, and sleeping at night in his snug, roomy houseboat, returning to town only at intervals with his game, for which he found, somehow, a ready sale. "I closed down (the engineering shed) for the Christmas week," said he, "and have had a week up Breydon, and haven't done so bad" Let me summarise his experiences. He met with the first lot of fowl on the 23rd, getting several mallard and seventeen coots. On the 24th he killed twenty-five coots at one shot with the big gun, and obtained altogether " two or three linen baskets" of these birds. There must have been quite three thousand coots on Breydon frozen out from the Broads ; they kept much in line, like soldiers in a regiment (as I have seen them here before in hard winters), and fed ravenously on the sweet, fattening stems of Zostera marina. They made quite an audible scrunching noise in tearing them up. A wretched adult crested grebe sat miser- ably bunched up on the ice, literally starving ; he knocked it over with an oar as he rowed along. About sixty swans visited Breydon. Sharman killed three, Halls shot one, which he believed to be a Polish swan ; and gave me a fairly representative description of it It was quickly sold for eating. The majority of the swans appeared to be whoopers. Geese had been scarce ; five 38 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY brents were seen, and a grey -lag goose had been killed. Halls' game list for the week was as follows : — i swan i teal 34 mallards and ducks i golden plover 6 pochards i crested grebe 5 wigeons 60 coots A few golden plovers hung about during the week, but were unusually shy. " Hard fowl," i.e. golden eyes, tufted ducks, and scaups, were seen in small bunches ; but they too were shy and wary. So many pochards have not been seen or killed for many years. The few larger gulls remaining here have been seen chasing unwounded dunlins whenever they happened to fly near them, but these quick-turning little birds are too swift for them ; escaped cripples fared worse, however. The hooded crows forsook the Breydon flats and marshes, and kept to the open reaches and the seashore. I saw a dead gull clean picked by them — as much of it as was not frozen into the ice on a ditch. One hungry fellow was observed making strange efforts to get some food down his gullet, but his heart failed him. Prompted by curiosity, the rejected morsel was examined, and found to be a tablet of highly scented toilet soap, much holed by his hard bill in trying to find, if possible, a sweeter kernel ! Kingfishers have been observed sitting miserably about on posts and rails, looking abject in their hunger ; and even those who usually have no pity were sorry for them. One came and tapped on the window of Halls' houseboat. Whilst out shooting, on one occasion, he left the door of the houseboat open, and a wagtail that had been hanging around for scraps went in and cleared the fragments off his dinner plate. One day when killing a wounded mallard by cutting its throat, so as not to damage its neck (!) as wringing will sometimes do, the blood dripped and congealed on the snow on the forepeak of the punt. While he was in the houseboat, a hungry starling flew down on the boat, and ravenously ate the crimsoned snow ; and when driven away, it returned and ate more of it. Halls said the 23rd was " a wildfowl day beyond all memory " ! Some small return bunches visited Breydon on WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 39 the 28th and 29th. The ice formed so rapidly on the night of the 2Qth that he had to return from the drain to his houseboat, having no ice-hook to cut a way through ; but on the 3