138 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
Gould, which were sent him alive, from Didlington, by 
Mr. Amhurst; but I also saw some young ones in 1859 as 
early as the 26th of March, which shows, that like rooks 
and other birds they are in this respect influenced by 
mild or backward seasons. By the first week in March 
Mr. Newcome tells me he used always to have a flight 
at “ passage” herons,* and for many years I have noted 
the appearance of these birds over the city not later than 
the middle of March, passing to and from the surround- 
ing marshes to the heronry at Harlham. Mr. Lubbock, 
as a proof of the extended flights occasionally made 
by these birds in search of food, states that formerly, 
at Keswick “the flounder, called provincially ‘butt,’ 
was often found under the trees in the breeding season,” 
and adds ‘“‘these butts must have been brought from 
Burgh flats at the back of Yarmouth ;” this, however, 
though by no means improbable, cannot be accepted as 
a fact, inasmuch as Mr. Gurney has known small 
flounders to be taken as high up the Norwich river 
as the New Mills. It is also remarkable, as noticed 
by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher, “that when the herons 
drop any of the food, which they bring to their 
young amongst the trees of the heronry, they make 
no attempt to recover it, but, probably from* a con- 
sciousness of their inability to rise from the ground in a 
confined space, allow it to remain where it falls.” Thus 
the Earlham keeper tells me he has frequently picked 
up large eels and other fish in a perfectly fresh state, 
* “ Passage herons” in falconry are those at which hawks are 
flown as they pass overhead, either to or from the heronry, generally 
at a great height. In the old days of the sport, the more usual 
mode was to spring the heron from the water-side and let loose 
the hawk at it as it rose, The quarry then speedily took to the 
water again, and the whole “ flight’’ as may be easily imagined was 
of a character quite different from that of the aerial combat of 
modern times. 
