132 BIRDS OF NOEFOLK. 



observed on liis lake, near Wymondham ; * and from the 

 Eev. H. H. Lubbock, of Hanworth, I learn that they 

 occasionally, in hard weather, visit the lake in Lord 

 Suffield's park, at Gunton, with goosanders and other 

 sea-fowl. I have known immature birds shot as far 

 up the Yare as Eockland Broad ; and in the severe 

 winter of 1838 Mr. J. H. Gurney remembers a pair 

 having been shot at on the ice, in the river at Earlham, 

 some two miles above Norwich. The sheld drake also 

 appeared during the flood of 1852-53 in the Southery 

 district, when Mr. A. Newton informs me that he saw 

 a pair, one of which was shot by Mr. Newcome on May 

 5th, 1853, in Hockwold Fen. 



Mr. Selby, from his own observation of the habits 

 of this species upon the Northumbrian coast, states that 

 the males do not pair until their j^lumage is perfected 

 in the second year, but, once paired, remain constant to 

 the same mate. In the male, also, at the commence- 

 ment of the breeding season, the fleshy knob at the 

 base of the upper mandible, scarcely perceptible in 

 autumn and winter, " begins to swell and acquires a 

 beautiful crimson hue, and when at its full development, 

 is nearly as large as a marble." The nests are formed 

 of " bent grass and other dry vegetable materials," lined 

 with soft down from the old birds' breasts, and the eggs, 

 from twelve to sixteen in number, "of a pure white 

 or slightly tinged with green," are incubated in thirty 

 days, and are sometimes ten or twelve feet from the 

 entrance of the burrow. The male sits on the eggs 

 when the female is off feeding, and both birds, like the 

 partridge and wild duck, will feign lameness, and adopt 

 other stratagems to decoy intruders from the vicinity of 



* See Lord Kimberley's paper on " Birds observed on the Kim- 

 berley Estate since 1847." — Trans. Norf and Nor Nat. Society," 

 vol. ii., part 1, p. 46. 



