22 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
identical in character. One peculiarity in their habits, 
which does not seem to have attracted much notice 
before, should here be mentioned. This was the 
pugnacity of the cocks in the spring. At Hlveden a 
shepherd (at least before the year 1820) on one occasion 
saw two cock birds fighting, and so intent on the 
combat were they that he ran up and killed one with 
his staff. This bird was sent to London to the late 
Mr. Newton and eaten. Of between fifteen and twenty 
nests, the situations of which have been more or less 
precisely pointed out or described by eye-witnesses in 
the Stow tract, only two were not in rye;* of these two, 
one was said to have been on the short rabbit-cropped 
ling of a warren, and the other in a young plantation 
of about two years’ growth; but, as it was often 
customary to grow rye between the rows of trees, before 
they had attained any height, it seems quite possible 
this had been done here, and in that case the occur- 
rence would not be so very exceptional. It has been 
so constantly asserted by various authors that bustards 
were commonly taken by greyhounds, that the state- 
ment has become an article of faith among many 
persons. Whatever the practice may have been in other 
parts of England, there is certainly no evidence that 
it was pursued in Norfolk or Suffolk. The Swaffham 
Coursing Meeting was one of the most celebrated in the 
whole country, and in the open districts of both counties 
the sport of coursing was formerly most extensively 
followed, greyhounds being very generally kept, yet none 
of the older inhabitants have ever heard, except from 
* Mr. Lubbock (“Fauna of Norfolk,’ p. 41), speaking of 
Coulson’s attempted feat, says the nest was “in a pea-field”; but 
the statement is otherwise uncorroborated, and Lord Albemarle, 
who was the author’s informant, does not seem to have been 
himself an eye-witness, and may have been misinformed. 
