BLACK STORK. 183 
letter from Mr. Anthony Hamond, jun., informing me 
that a fine black stork had been shot by one of the 
gamekeepers in some meadows on the banks of the 
river Nar, at Westacre, about half-past four in the 
morning of the 19th.* The bird, it seems, had been 
observed about the same locality on several occasions 
for more than a week, but had hitherto kept well out 
of shot, and only on the day previous to its death, 
Mr. Hamond and myself had been watching a pair of 
gadwalls in the Nar, scarcely a quarter of a mile from 
the spot where the stork was killed. It proved on 
dissection to be an adult female, weighing over seven 
pounds, and measured, I am told, six feet two inches 
from tip to tip of wings. Its plumage showed no signs 
of having been in confinement, and, owing to its extreme 
shyness, it was even at last obtained with much diffi- 
culty. This noble specimen now forms part of the fine 
collection of birds at Westacre High-house. 
Although the first time that this species has been 
known to be killed in this county, it is probable that 
others may have visited our coast, and either escaped 
injury or passed wholly unnoticed. Thus, in Mr. 
Joseph Clarke’s MS. notes on rare birds at Yarmouth 
and other parts of the county, I find the following 
under the head of Ciconia nigra, ‘‘ Three were followed 
in Norfolk for some days in the year 1823; and in 
1832 one was killed in Suffolk, at Grundisburgh, and 
was in the possession of a surgeon, a Mr. Ditton, of 
that place.” The latter is no doubt the bird mentioned 
by Yarrell as killed at Otley, near Ipswich. 
* This bird was recorded at the time in the “Ibis,” 1867, p. 
382; “ Zoologist,” s. s., p. 872; and in “Land and Water,” vol. iv., 
p. 26. 
