Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/185

Rh vast stretches of marshes ditched and drained, the extensive level of swamp must have been at most hours of the tide a very paradise for the wildfowl, and those who sought them. "It would be difficult to imagine," wrote the Messrs. Paget in 1834, "a spot more suitable to their (the wildfowls') habits than Breydon affords, consisting as it does of a sheet of water some miles in extent, with shallow borders, or flats (as they are called), and surrounded, almost as far as the eye can reach, by marshes. The water leaving its banks quite bare for a considerable extent at every ebbing of the tide, exposes an abundance of the small crustaceous animals and other food most congenial to the Duck tribe. Even in the severest winters it is seldom so completely frozen over as not still to afford, in the small fish with which it abounds, and the crabs and insects about its banks, a sufficiency of provision for the fowl; and it is in such seasons that the greatest numbers are secured. Almost benumbed with cold, they flock together, and while they sit crowded up in a compact mass, to prevent the warmth of their bodies escaping, the gunner may, in his flat-bottomed boat, approach within a comparatively short distance of them by means of channels made in the flats, and with a single discharge of his gun, which moves on a swivel in the midships of his boat, effect a most extraordinary slaughter."

To-day these attractions remain much the same, but the birds are fewer. In severe spells of frost astonishing numbers of wildfowl are occasionally seen there, when a constant fusillade is heard, the frequent sharp crack of shoulder-guns being punctuated by the louder boom of the punt-guns. During a snap of frost in December, 1899, hundreds of Wigeon, Tufted Ducks, Mallard, and other fowl, besides thousands of Dunlins, swarmed on Breydon; and Durrant's game-stall presented a remarkable appearance, covered as it was with hundreds of wild birds of various species.

Reverting again to the Pagets' 'Sketch,' an instance is related of a punt-gunner, named Thomas, "who one morning, on awaking in his boat on the flats, saw not far from him a number of wildfowl sitting in a crowd close together on the ice. From the boat being nearly covered with snow he had escaped their observation while they were collecting in the night. He immediately fired