The irruption of waxwings into Norfolk. 219



Bembo told me that one day he and his son thought they heard a

miner knocking off bits of quartz from the reefs that abound in that

locality, hunting for gold, that is known by the miners as ‘knaping’ :

while a couple of years or so before there had been hundreds of

miners in that district hunting for gold he had seen no one for a

long time, so my friend and his son strolled off the track to see

who it was, when judge of their astonishment when they found it

was a cock lyre bird that was imitating the sound made by a miner

knaping. It has been recorded that some birds that were quite

tame in a place in Gippsland used to imitate the sound of a heavy

wagon passing over a road made of small logs placed close together

and called a corduroy road. We may therefore he very proud of this

wonderful bird, and very glad that Australia possesses the most

wonderful bird mimic in the world.



THE IRRUPTION/OF WAXWINGS INTO

NORFOLK DURING THE WINTER OF 1913-14


By J. H. Gurney, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.


Reprinted from “ The Transactions of The Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists'

Society," ( Vol. IX., p. 773).


The fL-st waxwing, of which any record was handed in for the

counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, was a fine crested bird sent to

Mr. Arthur Patterson on November 15th, 1913, a date ten days

later than for Yorkshire. After that, for two months or more,

waxwings kept on coming, as it were in waves, and until well

into February they were to be seen, singly or in small flocks, in

both counties. At fii'st they were met with in parishes near the

sea, and in one instance Mr. H. Cole saw a flock at Cromer in the

act of arriving (November 15th), hut they soon made their way

inland. They appeared to be hungry birds, not only after their

voyage, hut by nature, in their eagerness for berries freely entering

villages, and not being afraid of the outskirts of such large towns

as Norwich and Cromer. At Norwich a small flock actually got as

far in among the houses as St. Giles’ Gates, and one came down the

chimney of Dr. Mills’ house in Surrey Sti’eet into a drawing room,

where it was promptly captured. The same indifference to man



