260 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
I find that a pair were shot at Wells in 1856, on the 
Q2ist of November, and two more at Yarmouth on 
December 16th. Again on the 12th of January, 1862, 
three specimens were sent up to Norwich from Sher- 
ingham beach with snow-buntings, knots, dunlins, 
and a purple sandpiper; and on the 26th of May, 
1862, during a severe frost, several couples were 
exhibited for sale, with other birds, in the Norwich 
market. On the 8th of January, 1867, a male bar-tailed 
godwit was taken in a meadow near Reepham, as Mr. 
F. Norgate informs me, most probably carried thus far 
inland by a heavy gale at the time. 
Mr. Harting describes the note of this bird as re- 
sembling the words “lou-ey, lou-ey.” 
I never remember to have heard the name of “ Half- 
curlew” applied to this species on the Norfolk coast, as 
stated by Mr. Johns in his “British Birds in their 
Haunts,” being a term here commonly and more appro- 
priately used for the whimbrel, but at Blakeney Mr. 
Dowell states that bar-tailed godwits are known to the 
local gunners by the singular appellation of “Picks” and 
“Scamells.” These words are of course written down 
phonetically, but whence their derivation I am at a loss 
to conceive. He believes by “ Scamells’” are meant 
the females and those found singly in autumn; and by 
“Picks,” the smaller males most abundant in the 
spring flocks. He further suggests that the word 
“Picks” may possibly have originated from their 
manner of feeding, as the turnstone in the same locality 
is termed the “Tangle picker”; but the definition of 
““Scamells” I must leave to the ingenuity and research 
of the indefatigable editor of “ The Hast Anglian.” 
On the Sussex coast this same species is known as 
the “sea woodecock,” and Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., 
assures me that a Pagham gunner once pointed out to 
him a godwit on the wing, and maintained his assertion 
that it was a woodcock. 
