1902 B ird- Life on the Broads : Summer 209 



be heard splouncing and splashing in their fights as one 

 couple invade the territories of another. Like those of the 

 Great Crested Grebe, their young are more gaily clad and 

 are more musical in their voice than their parents, who now 

 have, after many many generations, assumed a more sober 

 plumage — if we may rely on the rule that early youth be- 

 trays the ancestral type. Young Robins of both sexes, and 

 the few Gannets which visit the Broads in summer, and 

 especially frequent the channel posts on Hickling, are well 

 known but striking examples of the dissimilarity of plumage 

 in adult and immature birds. This is a very paradise for 

 Cuckoos ; they choose Meadow Pipits for their earliest 

 foster-mothers, and consign their latest eggs to the Reed 

 Warbler, the Pied Wagtail acting as an intermediary. 

 Never do I remember hearing the Cuckoos singing so late 

 and so clearly as this season, and they have been very 

 abundant too this year. A week or two ago I saw (July 

 loth) seven freshly-blown eggs, by their size, colour, and 

 markings the efforts of two birds, I should say, as they 

 were all taken within a mile radius. 



Hairy caterpillars — of the Tiger, Eggar, and Drinker 

 Moths — abound here, as their respective favourite food- 

 plants flourish ; and the Emperor Moth condescends to 

 nibble our luxuriant willows and bogbeans, heather being 

 scarce in the district. 



The Common Bunting, locally called Bunt Lark or Thick- 

 headed Lark, is another bird that for some unknown reason 

 seems to be much more scarce than was the case on the 

 marshes and arable land adjoining, whilst the Missel-thrush 

 has greatly increased in numbers during the past fifteen or 

 twenty years. It is curious how conspicuously and low 

 down this wild bird sometimes builds its nest : last spring- 

 time I had one in a Scotch fir-tree within six feet of the 

 centre of my drive and less than four feet from the ground, 

 and so attractively adorned with a piece of white paper that 

 for mercy' sake I abstracted the flag, lest my Sunday-school 

 children might be tempted to violate the badge of truce. 

 Flocking and resorting to the fields and marshes soon after 

 the young can fly, these birds do no damage to garden fruit; 

 but Blackbirds and Thrushes are an annual plague, and the 



