14 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
seem also, but this is not so certain, in Hast Anglia to 
have absented themselves from the time when the 
harvest was gathered in till the beginning of the new 
year. Indeed, the existing evidence of the appearance 
of bustards from the middle of September to Christmas 
is very scanty, and this is the more remarkable because 
this period of the year, forming a great part of the 
_ shooting season, is just when one would have expected 
more to have been observed than perhaps at any other 
time.* Early in January these birds showed themselves, 
and remained in droves, generally frequenting the turnip- 
fields, where they fed largely on turnip-tops, and till the 
winter-corn was sufficiently grown to afford them shelter, 
they were seen commonly enough. When the corn, the 
rye especially, was coming into ear, the hen birds retired 
into it to form their nests—shallow holes scraped in the 
ground with a slight bedding of dry grass. Here they laid 
their two eggs—perhaps, indeed, three occasionally, but 
testimony as to the third is not altogether conclusive— 
and endeavoured for some months to avoid observation. 
When the corn was cut, they gathered again into droves 
for about a month or six weeks, after which time they 
* The late Mr. [Henry] Elwes, as recorded, by Yarrell, “shot 
a hen bustard to a pointer in a turnip-field, at Congham, in the 
autumn of 1831.” There is also a story of Colonel Wildman, of 
Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, having killed a bustard in 
Norfolk during the shooting season, but date and other particulars 
are wanting. At Elveden, between the 4th and 18th of Sept., 1813, 
the late Sir Alexander Grant shot at a young bustard, which was 
caught in arabbit-trapa few days after (the 27th.) The bird shot by 
Mr. Wood, as previously mentioned, was killed in autumn. The 
L’Estrange Household Book, already quoted, mentions one brought 
to Hunstanton in the forty-first week, which, counting (after the old 
style) from 1st of March, would be that beginning December 6th. 
These are all the occurrences bearing upon this point, and thus 
there is positively no precise information respecting the appearance 
of a bustard during the months of October and November. 
