310 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



CORACIAS GARRULA, Linnajns. 



EOLLER. 



This beautiful species, tliough an extremely rare 

 visitant, has occurred in several well authenticated 

 instances in this county, as will be seen from the 

 following records, which I have collected from every 

 available source; but, except in two or three cases, 

 I have been wholly unable to trace the specimens or 

 ascertain their existence in collections at the present 

 time. The late Mr. Hunt, in a communication to 

 Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear (Catalogue of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk Birds), respecting a Suffolk specimen, killed 

 at Bungay in September, 1817, remarks: — "1 am also 

 credibly informed that another specimen of the same 

 bird was killed in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth about 

 the same time ^ ^- ^ and late in the spring of 1818 

 another was killed in the neighbourhood of Cromer." 

 Strangely enough, in Messrs. Paget's 'Sketch,' there 

 is no mention of the Roller as having appeared near 

 Yarmouth, and only a Suffolk specimen, killed at 

 Blundestone in May, 1831, is noticed in Sir W. J. 

 Hooker's MS. notes of the same district. I have 

 recently ascertained, however, through Mr. Rising, of 

 Horsey, that a male in the possession of Mr. R. F. 

 Whaites, of Ingham, was shot in February, 1824, at 

 Waxham, near Yarmouth, by a man named Tuck, the 



states, tliat in the stomach of a young cuckoo, dissected by him- 

 self, were about twenty full-grown caterpillars of the peacock 

 butterfly (Papilio lo) undigested. The hairy coating observable in 

 the stomachs of these bu-ds is apparently a specific peculiarity, and 

 not attributable, as supposed by some, to their preference for 

 hairy caterpillars. 



