232 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
as the restricted range of the nightingale in England ; 
but unquestionably, to the present time, there is no 
reason to suppose that it has done so. Stragglers have 
been seen in June; and old birds, accompanied by their 
young broods, have been observed here as early as the 
first week in July, and yet no former record, nor the 
experience of any living naturalist, affords a single 
exception to this apparently fixed rule. Mr. Salmon, 
in describing this species as a regular migrant in the 
neighbourhood of Thetford (“ Mag. Nat. Hist.,” 1836, 
p- 525), states that, “like the dotterel, it only visits 
us during its periodical migrations ;” and Mr. Alfred 
Newton, whose experience is that of some twenty 
years later, is of the same opinion. Mr. Lubbock, in 
a recent letter, assures me that he has “never known 
the common sandpiper to breed in Norfolk,” although 
some sixty years ago he remembers them not very 
uncommon on the river Yare, and has seen one as near 
Norwich as Carrow-bridge; “but almost always soli- 
tary, never more than two together.” On the 9th of 
July, 1861, I met with two or three small flocks on the 
banks of the Bure, about seven miles from Yarmouth, 
a very favourite locality; and Mr. H. T. Frere (“ Zoolo- 
gist,” p. 1876) thus mentions their most exceptional 
abundance on the same river near Wroxham, in August, 
1847 :—“I was much struck by the number of common 
sandpipers, which I saw flying up and down; there 
were many family parties of five or six, but on two 
occasions I saw a flock of as many as thirty or forty 
together close by me.” By the beginning of September 
these birds again leave us for the south, but a single 
bird was killed by Mr. J. HE. Harting in 1863, on the 
Bure, within a mile of Yarmouth, as late as the 2nd of 
October. 
The diving powers of this bird, which it possesses 
in common with several other allied species, is thus 
