232 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



as the restricted range of tlie nightingale in England ; 

 but unquestionably, to the present time, there is no 

 reason to suppose that it has done so. Stragglers have 

 been seen in June ; and old birds, accompanied by their 

 young broods, have been observed here as early as the 

 first week in July, and yet no former record, nor the 

 experience of any living naturalist, affords a single 

 exception to this apparently fixed rule. Mr. Salmon, 

 in describing this species as a regular migrant in the 

 neighbourhood of Thetford (" Mag. Nat. Hist.," 1836, 

 p. 525), states that, " like the dotterel, it only visits 

 us during its periodical migrations ;" and Mr. Alfred 

 Newton, whose experience is that of some twenty 

 years later, is of the same opinion. Mr. Lubbock, in 

 a recent letter, assures me that he has '^ never known 

 the common sandpiper to breed in Norfolk," although 

 some sixty years ago he remembers them not very 

 uncommon on the river Yare, and has seen one as near 

 Norwich as Carrow-bridge ; " but almost alwaj^s soli- 

 tary, never more than two together." On the 9th of 

 July, 1861, I met with two or tlrree small flocks on the 

 banks of the Bure, about seven miles from Yarmouth, 

 a very favourite locality ; and Mr. H. T. Frere (" Zoolo- 

 gist," p. 1876) thus mentions their most exceptional 

 abundance on the same river near Wroxham, in August, 

 1847 : — " I was much struck by the number of common 

 sandpipers, which I saw flying up and down ; there 

 were many family parties of five or six, but on t'VYO 

 occasions I saw a flock of as many as thirty or forty 

 together close by me." By the beginning of September 

 these birds again leave us for the south, but a single 

 bird was killed by Mr. J. E. Harting in 1863, on the 

 Bure, within a mile of Yarmouth, as late as the 2nd of 

 October. 



The diving powers of this bird, which it possesses 

 in common with several other allied species, is thus 



