54 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
during the last few years in Hast Norfolk, this species 
would seem, at the present time, to be confined almost 
entirely to the wild hilly country lying to the westward 
of Cromer, within the “Cliff” district, and that still 
extensive, though not continuous, line of heaths and 
common lands, which, commencing about Rackheath, 
Mousehold and Thorpe, to the north of this city, 
proceeds in a north-westerly direction till it joins on to 
the former tract again about Hempstead and Holt. Here, 
and more particularly at Hempstead, as my friend Mr. 
Edwards informs me, they were extremely numerous 
some thirty years ago, when a large extent of young 
plantations afforded both food and shelter* amongst the 
young trees, and whence these birds might be flushed in 
flocks of from forty to fifty at a time at the close of the 
breeding season. Although difficult enough of approach 
in their usually open haunts, it was easy enough under 
these circumstances, to obtain shots at them, by sending 
one gun forward to the end of the planting, and many 
were, no doubt, killed in this manner when little thought 
was given to their eventual scarcity. The system of 
egging, also, as then pursued, could not fail in some 
degree to show its effects, but the gradual though 
* Mr. Lubbock particularly mentions the partiality of this 
species for recently formed coverts, remarking that “the greatest 
allurement to them is an extensive new plantation made in the 
open country, and on the improved plan of double trenching 
the soil. The loosened ground affords better means of obtaining 
worms and beetles, their usual food, and the birds appear par- 
ticularly to delight in the partial concealment which the young 
trees afford in the first year or two; as soon as the trees attain any 
size all attraction ceases.” In the spring of 1867, when driving 
with Mr. Anthony Hamond, jun., through a roadway dividing 
a recently formed plantation, adjoining Mr. Elwes’s residence at: 
Congham, we disturbed a pair of these birds, which ran on for 
some distance, but at last rose and alighted again amongst the 
dwarf fir-trees. 
