280 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



PICA CAUDATA, Fleming. 



MAGPIE. 



The Magpie, although classed with the carrion-crow 

 in the same proscribed list, is still met with in some 

 parts of the county, where it breeds regularly, but 

 besides the fatality of a '^ bad name," the improved state 

 of agriculture, resulting in the thinning of hedgerows 

 and such dense tangled coverts as they love to frequent, 

 has rendered magpies, in Norfolk, extremely scarce, as 

 compared with many of the midland and southern 

 counties. At the present time their chief stronghold 

 would seem to be the thickly wooded districts in the 

 north-eastern part of the county. They are scarce in 

 West Norfolk, and around Norwich extremely so — the 

 few met with from time to time in this neighbour- 

 hood, being invariably obtained during severe weather, 

 either stragglers dispersed in search of food or, more 

 probably still, migratory specimens from the north. Mr. 

 Alfred Newton, in the " Zoologist" (p. 1694), mentions 

 the occurrence of many magpies and jays in the county 

 during the severe season of 1846-7, evidently strangers, 

 arriving with other winter migrants. An unusual 

 number were also observed in the early part of 1857. 



GARRULUS GLANDARIUS (Linnseus). 



JAY. 



Common throughout the year, breeding in Norfolk, 

 and, like the last species, would seem to receive, at 

 times at least, considerable accessions to its numbers in 

 autumn. Every sportsman knows the small flocks of 



