STONE-CURLEW. 5a 
western parts of the county, yet judging from the 
localities in which a few scattered pairs are still met 
with, during the breeding season, in the neighbourhood 
of Norwich, it seems strange that Sir Thomas should 
not have obtained a specimen, for his purpose, much 
nearer home. 
Like its big cousin the great bustard, though by 
no means in the same degree, the stone-curlew, even 
as a summer visitant, has been affected by those 
vast agricultural changes which, dating back from the 
commencement of the present century, have changed 
so materially the general aspect of the country and con- 
tracted everywhere the boundaries of the heath and the 
fen. Asa ground breeder, also, its eggs are peculiarly 
liable to accident, and this, combined with the wholesale 
system of egging pursued of late years, might alone ac- 
count for the diminution of a species which, laying only 
two egos ata time, is necessarily limited in its powers of 
reproduction. Compared, however, with the wild open 
tracts of the “ Breck” district, the eastern side of the 
county can at no time have possessed the same amount 
of attraction for these birds, as even the former locality 
continues to afford; whilst the enclosure, on all sides, 
of heaths and commons, and the rapid growth of planta- 
tions on our once bleak soils, is fast depriving them, both 
towards the north and east, of the few haunts once 
favourable to their retiring habits. 
In the immediate neighbourhood of Norwich, as at 
Costessy, Haston, and Bowthorpe, the stone-curlew, until 
within the last twenty or five and twenty years, bred 
regularly on the higher grounds, frequenting for that 
purpose certain large open fields, to which even here the 
term “Breck” is not uncommonly applied, whilst at 
Thorpe one or two pairs are still met with every spring. 
Tracing out, however, on the map, the localities from 
whence I have known either birds or eggs procured 
