BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



17 



NOTES. 

 Fifty years ago. 



The ornithologist who may resort to the Norfolk 

 Broads in the hope of seeing a spoonbill or a 

 bearded tit, is not likely to pause at Great Yar- 

 mouth on any similar quest. Yet it is not more 

 than forty or fifty years ago since the wide sands, 

 the dunes or denes, and the marshes close to that 

 Cockney paradise swarmed with an interesting 

 bird-life, which has now either disappeared entirely 

 from the vicinity or is to be found only in protected 

 areas. On the beach, says a bird student who has 

 been a life-long resident in the quaint old town, 

 " were generally to be seen oystercatchers, sand- 

 pipers, and bunches of dunlin (or stint). Little- 

 stints in flocks ran in and out amongst the shingle, 

 but these were very shy, and it was difficult to get 

 near them. Ringed dotterel (ring-plover) were 

 there in dozens and in scores where the rifle-butts 

 now are. Grey plover and black-breasted plover, 

 or turnstones, were a familiar sight, while the 

 golden-plover haunted the marshes, and flocks of 

 pewits nested by the shore. The godwit was par- 

 ticularly common, redshank and greenshank abun- 

 dant ; and plentiful too were the curlews, known 

 as whole- curlew and half-curlew (whimbrel). Wood- 

 cock sometimes nested on the denes, among the 

 furze. Snipe and jack-snipe were common enough 

 in winter. On the marshes also, and at Breydon, 

 we had the beautiful avocet, also water-rails, knots 

 not infrequently, and occasionally a grebe. Among 

 the rare visitors I remember a black tern being 

 shot by my father. We did not know at the time 

 that it was a rarity, but when a local dealer gave 

 me sixpence for its body, though badly mauled by 

 the dog, we felt sure that it must be something out 

 of the common. [The black tern bred in Norfolk 

 down to 1836.] Another time my father shot a 

 Caspian tern, which was stuffed and presented to 

 the Norwich Museum, where I believe it still is ; 

 and in a field near a hoopoe was taken. The 

 ronds, or marshy lands between river and marshes, 

 were a great resort of wild-fowl, among them being 

 mallard, teal, wigeon, smew, pochard or poker- 

 duck, garganey, goldeneye, sheldrake. In winter 

 we used to see great flocks of snowbirds (the local 

 name for the snow-bunting). The varying black 

 and white of their plumage had a beautiful effect 

 as they flew, now flashing white as snow, now 

 appearing like a dark cloud, and it was commonly 

 said that no two birds were ever seen with the 

 same relative amount of black and white/' 



Lost and Vanishing Birds. 



Probably few counties have had, and have lost, 

 so many beautiful and rare species as Norfolk ; 

 but the ornithological sections of the Victoria 

 County Histories remind us how many counties 

 have been, or are being, depleted of their rarer 

 birds. Never a county but has to lament the dis- 

 appearance of some of the most interesting 

 members of its avifauna ; not a record of such 

 disappearance but points to the necessity for 

 strong County Protection Orders and for Watchers 

 to safeguard rare species, such as the peregrine, 

 where they attempt to breed. Sussex, for example, 

 has lost within a comparatively recent period the 

 bearded tit, chough, bittern, great bustard, ruff, and 

 avocet. The locality nowadays boasts, as the 

 Aihenawn remarks, " an unusually large number 

 of 'scientific' destroyers of bird life"; and the 

 same authority adds that two specimens of the 

 kite were recently killed within a few weeks of 

 each other in the neighbourhood of Battle. 

 Commoner species, such as wheatear and skylark, 

 have their enemies in the bird-catcher and his 

 patrons. 



North and South. 



Sussex, from its position, gains an unusually 

 rich migrant and coast bird-life. Derbyshire, 

 occupying a place in middle-England, gets birds 

 of both north and south. Nightingale, twite, 

 ring-ouzel, nuthatch, dipper, reed-warbler, merlin, 

 wryneck, grey- wagtail, and grouse, all Derby- 

 shire birds, are not often to be found all 

 breeding in one county. Derby, however, has 

 had its losses. In addition to the usual extir- 

 pation of buzzards and ravens, the Rev. F. C. 

 Jourdain (who writes the Derby ornithology in 

 the Victoria History) speaks of the less easily 

 accountable disappearance of stonechat, pied 

 fly-catcher, and woodlark. 



Birds of Durham. 



In the northern county of Durham there is, of 

 course, the same tale of the extermination of the 

 larger birds, and the growth of manufacturing 

 towns like Sunderland, Shields, Hartlepool, Dar- 

 lington, and Stockton, with their surrounding 

 collieries and ironworks, is hardly favourable to 

 wild-bird life. Slag-heaps do not make such good 

 nesting-places as an unkept hedge, and a coalshaft 

 does not render a field more tempting to larks or 

 yellowhammers. Still, there is much fine country 



