26 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



white, excepting a few dark featliers on the back, was 

 killed at Eiddlesworth in 1851 ; and, together with 

 another specimen of the same variety obtained a few 

 weeks later, is preserved in the collection of Mr. Thorn- 

 hill, of that place. The first of these is described in the 

 " Zoologist," p. 3276, by Mr. Edward Newton, as having 

 the beak white, but the irides and legs as usual. This 

 species is occasionally netted by our bird-catchers in 

 the same manner as the kestrels before alluded to. 



MILVUS ICTINUS, Savigny. 



KITE. 



The Kite, once the terror of our farm-yards, is so no 

 more ; the ^^ war of exterm.ination" against the race hav- 

 ing fairly banished it from the county of Norfolk, and, 

 only as an accidental visitant on its migratory course, 

 can it be included in the present list. In former years 

 this bird occasionally remained with us to breed, and 

 Mr. Lubbock, referring to the fact of its doing so in 

 Huntingdonshire,^ observes — ^^It used half a century 



* These birds have, I believe, ceased to breed in Huntingdon- 

 shire for some years, where Monk's wood was formerly a favourite 

 haunt. Mr. Alfred Newton, in his " Ootheca Wolleyana," page 112, 

 records three eggs in the late Mr. WoUey's collection, as taken in 

 that county — two in 1843 and one in 1844, with the following 

 extract from Mr. Wolley's notes appended to the latter : — " Kites 

 are becoming very rare near Alconbury hill. I am not sure that I 

 saw one this year during my five days' stay at Sawtry." From 

 Lincolnshire, as I learn from the same work, eggs of this bird 

 were received in 1853, 64, 66, and 67, but none more recently ; and 

 to the last record the following note is added by Mr. Newton : — 

 " Mr. Adrian informed my brother that the kites in Lincolnshu'e 

 were becoming scarcer every year. This he attributed partly to 

 the destruction of the birds, and partly to that of their favourite 

 haunts, by the felling and stubbing of the woods, in two of which 

 one hundred acres had been cut down since the begimiing of the 

 year, and this in the best locality." 



