350 BIRDS OP NOEFOLK. 



1870, and 1872. In the year 1874 very many examples 

 of this species were met with ; after a heavy gale on the 

 20th October numbers were brought into Yarmouth, 

 and Mr. Frere informed Mr. Stevenson that one game- 

 dealer in that town had thirty skuas at one time, prob- 

 ably nearly all pomatorhine. The larger number of 

 these birds it will be observed by the above records have 

 been obtained in October, others in November, and a 

 few in September ; it will also be seen that many of 

 these were procured in localities far from the sea. 



From 1874 till the year 1879, when occurred the 

 remarkable influx of which I have now to speak, I find 

 no mention of this bird either in Mr. Stevenson's or my 

 own notes, and from the most interesting and exhaustive 

 account of this event communicated by Mr. Stevenson 

 to the " Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society," in 

 whose " Transactions," vol. iii., pp. 99-119, it will be 

 found printed, I condense what follows. 



" The great ornithological feature of the autumn 

 of 1879 was," says Mr. Stevenson, " the appearance 

 in extraordinary numbers of pomatorhine skuas, with 

 Richardson's and Buffon's skuas in very much smaller 

 quantities, along the entire eastern and north-eastern 

 coast line ; not merely, as in most seasons, passing 

 southward on their ordinary migratory course — or col- 

 lecting far out at sea around the herring smacks on 

 their fishing grounds, or the lightships anchored off 

 the dangerous shoals — but swarming in our harbours, 

 bays, and estuaries. Some few, whirled inland by 

 the force of the wind, have been picked up dead or 

 exhausted far from the coast ; whilst others have been 

 observed skimming over the fields in close vicinity 

 to the sea, like ordinary gulls in stormy weather, 

 or tracing back for miles our tidal rivers; the sur- 

 vivors of these northern invaders — for the slaughter 

 has been considerable — returning only after many 

 days, and when the gales had ceased, to their natural 

 element." Mr. Stevenson does not attribute this sudden 

 influx to an extraordinary migration, " but to a succession 

 of violent gales, which compelled the birds while per- 

 forming their usual autumnal southerly migration, to take 

 shelter for a time," as coasting vessels under similar 



