GLOSSY IBIS. 191 
IBIS FALCINELLUS (Gmel.) 
GLOSSY IBIS. 
Mr. Lubbock, in 1845, thus wrote of this rare species, 
“Fifty years back it was seen often enough to be 
known to gunners and fishermen as the black curlew,*” 
but now a straggler or two at long and uncertain 
intervals is an important event in local ornithology, and 
the bird itself, if procured, a coveted possession by all 
local collectors. In the various stages of plumage, 
however, to which the terms glossy, bay, and green have 
been applied by authors, this Ibis has been killed in 
Norfolk in many well-authenticated instances, the first 
of which I can find any exact record being the bird 
stated by Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear to have 
been seen by them, and “shot in the winter of 1818, 
in the marshes on the western coast of Norfolk, near 
Lynn ;” adding, moreover, “‘ that it did not appear to 
have attained its full plumage, from the circumstance 
of its having four transverse bars of white on its 
throat.”? From the same authors we also learn that “in 
the month of May, 1822, three birds of this species 
were seen at Hockwold [fen], in Norfolk.” Two of 
them were killed, and are in the possession of the 
Rev. Henry Tilney, of that place.’? One of these, in 
adult plumage, is now in Mr. Newcome’s collection, at 
Feltwell, from whom I recently ascertained that the 
other (both having been shot by Mr. Tilney), was, 
unfortunately, not preserved. The last two are also 
noticed in Mr. Lombe’s MS. notes, as killed in June, 
not May, which is, I believe, correct. Next in point of 
date, are the pair recorded by the Messrs. Paget as 
* Under this name it is possibly the species meant in the old 
adage— 
“The curlew be she white or black, 
Carries twelve-pence on her back.” 
