The ruff normally feeds using a steady walk and pecking action, selecting food items by sight, but it will also wade deeply and submerge its head. On saline lakes in East Africa it often swims like a phalarope, picking items off the surface. It will feed at night as well as during the day. It is thought that Ruff use both visual and auditory cues to find prey. When feeding, the ruff frequently raises its back feathers, producing a loose pointed peak on the back; this habit is shared only by the black-tailed godwit. During the breeding season, the ruff’s diet consists almost exclusively of the adults and larva of terrestrial and aquatic insects such as beetles and flies. On migration and during the winter, the ruff eats insects (including caddis flies, water-beetles, mayflies and grasshoppers), crustaceans, spiders, molluscs, worms, frogs, small fish, and also the seeds of rice and other cereals, sedges, grasses and aquatic plants. Migrating birds in Italy varied their diet according to what was available at each stopover site. Green aquatic plant material, spilt rice and maize, flies and beetles were found, along with varying amounts of grit. On the main wintering grounds in West Africa, rice is a favoured food during the later part of the season as the ricefields dry out. Just before migration, the ruff increases its body mass at a rate of about 1% a day, much slower than the bar-tailed godwits breeding in Alaska, which fatten at four times that rate. This is thought to be because the godwit cannot use refuelling areas to feed on its trans-Pacific flight, whereas the ruff is able to make regular stops and take in food during overland migration. For the same reason, the ruff does not physiologically shrink its digestive organs to reduce bodyweight before migrating, unlike the godwit. Ruffs were formerly trapped for food in England in large numbers; on one occasion, 2,400 were served at Archbishop Neville's enthronement banquet in 1465. The birds were netted while lekking, sometimes being fattened with bread, milk and seed in holding pens before preparation for the table.  ...if expedition is required, sugar is added, which will make them in a fortnight's time a lump of fat: they then sell for two Shillings or half-a-crown a piece…