12G BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



rabbits (the provincial name for Metliwold) abound to 

 tliis day, and are much sought for by poulterers. Below 

 Cranwich and Mundford, again, in a south-easterly 

 direction, to Santon, the blowing sands of that portion 

 of the " Breck " district present even now not un- 

 favourable conditions for the nesting of this species, 

 though it is difficult to imagine whence food was pro- 

 cured for the nestlings till old enough to follow their 

 parents ; and it is to be remarked that now-a-days there 

 is no locality known far from the sea in which this 

 species breeds. If we accept, then, Sir Thomas Browne's 

 statement in the sense above given, I see no reason to 

 doubt that this inland locality is that to which he refers, 

 and his brief record, in the absence of any local tradi- 

 tion, is the only evidence preserved to us — as in the 

 case of the spoonbill and the cormorant breeding, two 

 hundred years ago, at Claxton and Eeedham — of a 

 most interesting ornithological fact. 



It would seem, however, that even of late years these 

 birds have not entirely confined their choice of nesting 

 places to our coast sand-hills, provided the accommoda- 

 tion of rabbit's burrows could be obtained elsewhere, as 

 Mr. Robert Wells, of Heacham, informs me that some 

 thii'ty years ago sheld ducks bred upon the heaths at 

 Dersingham and Sandringham, and a pair of wild birds 

 once hatched their young in a rabbit's burrow on his 

 farm at Sedgeford, each of these localities being about 

 three miles distant from the nearest point of the coast. 



At the present time the few pairs that spend their 

 summer in Norfolk are to be met with only on that 

 portion of our coast, which extends from Holme, near 



*'■ Macgillivray states (" Br. Bds.," v., p. 26), that he knew of one 

 instance of the sheld duck breeding on an island " on which there 

 were no other quadrupeds but seals, and still the nest was in a 

 burrow, which it must have made for itself." 



