Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/397

Rh the law is upheld. Happily there is a desire on all hands to do this, and one gentleman even negotiated for the purchase of an estate, it was said, for the sole purpose of protecting the Bearded Tits.

The following is an approximate estimate of their decrease in Norfolk in six decennial periods since 1838, but the earlier figures given are little more than a guess:—

The number of broads on which they now nest is about eleven large, and ten small ones, not including Wroxham Broad, where boating has banished them, though the Grebes remain.

One cause of their decrease is that the celebrated broads are gradually, but it is to be feared surely, growing up, though there is another more potent reason. For years, prior to 1895, there was a systematic trade in their eggs, and every egg dealer and moth hunter helped himself. Such devastation was criminal, but happily it is stopped now.

Both birds and eggs are protected by law, and the remnant are already feeling benefit from the protection afforded by this salutary measure, which came into force on May 1st, 1895. The broads where the Bearded Tits have had the best chance of escaping persecution are the small private ones, and those places where the proprietors have allowed the reeds to grow instead of cutting them, thereby providing high cover, which is an asylum where many a nest may escape the keenest eye. Unfortunately for the birds, it is rather an easy nest to find, for a pair will choose one particular bed of reeds year after year rather than move away.

Since the drainage of Salthouse sea-broad in 1851, the Bearded Tit has ceased to breed there, but the reed beds in Cley, adjoining, are still large enough to attract occasional migrants. It is very likely that the examples met with by Dr. Power and others in 1895, and on several previous occasions near Cley sluice, and at Morston and Burnham further west, had crossed the German Ocean, as also those seen in a pond at Holt in September, 1898, and May, 1899. In December, 1899, four were seen at Wiveton, still further north, where they remained a month.