SANDERLING. Lb / 
Yarmouth, Mr. Frere tells me they arrive like the 
turnstones by the end of August or beginning of 
September, but are then less numerous than in spring ; 
and are not seen in that neighbourhood during the 
winter months, although, on the shores of the Wash, 
(possessing more attractions for this species), I have 
often known specimens killed, in their delicate grey 
plumage, in December and January. On that portion 
of the coast, in September, 1863, more particularly 
in the vicinity of Hunstanton, Mr. Dowell found them 
frequenting the beach, in flocks of from one or two 
hundred to five hundred together, thousands of them, in 
fact, being there congregated like dunlins, on Breydon, 
during hard weather; and to make quite sure of the 
species, he killed several specimens at different times. 
Whether this was, or was not, an exceptional visita- 
tion as to numbers,* I am not prepared to say, but 
I have never heard of any similar instance in this 
county; and at Blakeney Mr. Dowell has seen them 
only in small companies of from five to twenty or 
thirty, or scattered singly along shore. In this locality 
he has also remarked that “they do not come far 
up the harbour, nor are they seen on the mud- 
flats, or jomed with the miscellaneous assemblage of 
waders one so often sees mixed together in winter.” 
By the 20th of July, also, in 1851, he observed several 
of these birds in Blakeney harbour, which had even 
then assumed their winter dress. Stragglers are but 
rarely met with inland, but Mr. F. Norgate tells 
me he once knew a sanderling killed on some ice at 
Sparham, near Norwich, probably driven out of its 
course by heavy gales at the time. Single birds are 
* It is stated by Meyer, in his “ British Birds,” that in Holland 
the flocks of sanderlings not unfrequently amount to “ many 
hundred individuals.” 
