20 BIEDS OP NOEFOLK. 



noticed for some days before they were killed frequent- 

 ing the arable lands adjoining the marshes, where they 

 perched on the small bushes stuck up in the fields to 

 prevent partridge netting, or settled on the ground 

 apparently searching the soil for worms or insects. The 

 old male and female were presented by Mr. Heath to 

 Mr. Gurney, who still has them at Catton; and the 

 young male to the late Mr. Edward Lombe, of Melton, 

 whose fine collection is now at Wymondliam, in the 

 possession of his daughter, Mrs. E. P. Clarke.'^ In 

 1832, as stated by the Messrs. Paget,t another example 

 was obtained on a marsh near Breydon, which came into 

 the possession of Mr. D. Preston, of Yarmouth; but 

 these gentlemen were decidedly in error in stating that 

 Mr. Heath's specimens were procured ^^in the same 

 year." No others appear to have been recognised from 

 that date until August, 1843, when an adult male, pre- 

 sented to our museum by Mr. J. H. Gurney (No. 11), 

 was procured near Norwich, and had the remains of 

 various beetles in its stomach. This is, I beheve, the 

 last that has occurred in this county, but an immature 

 specimen, in my own collection, was shot near the 

 Somerleyton station, on the Lowestoft line (Suffolk), as 

 recently as the 12th of July, 1862. The orange-legged 

 hobby, as this species is sometimes called, may be dis- 

 tinguished at any age from that last described by its 

 white talons. 



* I have also a fiirtlier corroboration of Mr. Heath's state- 

 ment in the following note, made by Mr. Lombe, in his copy of 

 "Bewick's Birds," most kindly extracted for me, with many 

 others, by Mrs. Clarke : — " They were mostly seen in the middle 

 of a fallow field, and the female was shot flying from the thorns. 

 The male (immature) now in my collection was shot from an oak in 

 the same field. The male (mature) shot on a heap of thorns. The 

 stomach contained insects." 



f *' A sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth and its 

 neighbourhood." By C. J. and James Paget, 1834. 



