254 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
tive warnings to hurry onwards to their northern breed- 
ing grounds. But though thus passing over us with a 
marvellous regularity, it is not every season that affords 
a harvest to the gunners. A cold backward spring, 
with a long succession of north-east winds, will so delay 
the passage of these birds, as well as many other 
migrants, that with the first favourable change they 
press forward almost unnoticed, resting scarcely for a 
night to recruit their strength. On the other hand, 
with a prevalence of south-west winds, at the appointed 
time, and more particularly, I am told, if accompanied 
by a light drizzling rain, the “muds” of Breydon 
and Blakeney are alike gay with their many tinted 
groups, and the records in my own notes of the numbers 
killed at such times, not of godwits only, but of knots, 
sanderlings, turnstones, and such like, within the space 
of a few days, fully proves the effect of these atmos- 
pherical influences. 
Such a season was that of 1855, and even more 
remarkable that of 1866, when, through the kind- 
ness of my friend Mr. F. Frere, of Yarmouth, I had 
the opportunity of dissecting some eighteen or twenty 
bar-tailed godwits, all procured on Breydon, and satis- 
fying myself as to the relative proportions of males 
and females, and the intensity or otherwise of the 
colouring of both sexes in their nuptial dress. Of this 
interesting series I have now fifteen skins in my own 
possession, from which the following notes have been 
made, and as the chance of taking accurate measure- 
ments in the flesh from so many examples but rarely 
occurs, I believe many of my readers will be interested 
in the result of my examinations. 
On the 7th of May I received two remarkably fine 
birds, which had probably been selected from their rich 
colouring, both of which proved to be males :— 
No.1. Male, adult. All the under surface of the plumage 
