COMMON QUAIL. 435 



females or young birds of the year. Mr. Alfred Newton 

 informs me that his brother Edward, when shooting, on 

 the 18th of February, 1853, on the borders of the fen- 

 lands, the ground at the time bemg thickly covered with 

 snow, shot a couple of quails that rose quite close to 

 him; and on examining the spot from whence they 

 sprang was convinced, by their mutings and other 

 indications, that they had never stirred from the place 

 since the snow first began to fall, two or three days 

 before. On the following day another was observed 

 near the same place. Mr. L. H. Irby has also recorded, 

 in the "Zoologist" for 1853, the fact of a female, 

 which had been seen near some stacks for several 

 days, having been shot at Threxton, near Watton, 

 on the 1st of March, the snow being then quite 

 deep. To the localities previously mentioned, from 

 whence I have known these birds sent to Norwich for 

 preservation, I may add Plumstead, Cossey, Earlham, 

 Wymondham, Attleborough, Ketteringham, Horstead, 

 Eanworth, Wroxham, Toft Monks, Eainham, Cromer, 

 Salthouse, and Blakeney. At Morston, near Blakeney, 

 as Mr. Dowell informs me, a few couple were generally 

 killed every season, and the same gentleman has more 

 recently killed one at Langham, in October, 1852, and 

 another at Dunton, in November, 1858. The only 

 bird I ever saw on the wing in this county was 

 flushed from a turnip field at Earlham, on the 6th 

 of December, 1852, and though scarcely the season 

 for a " squeaker" partridge, I believe, but for its pecu- 

 liar cry, I should not have fired at it; as it chanced, 

 however, I made a long shot and bagged it. This proved 

 an adult female, and, oddly enough, by one of those 

 strange coincidences for which there is no accounting, 

 I had only a few minutes before (remembering Mr. 

 Lubbock's remark that they were formerly plentiful in 

 that neighbourhood) enquired of an old gamekeeper in 

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