340 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
month.* On the 29th of May, 1853, a single bird was 
shot at Hickling, but no more were seen. Mr. Lubbock 
with the late Mr. Girdlestone found a pair of jack snipes 
on Bradwell Common, on the Ist of May, 1827;+ but 
a further search on the 8th proved fruitless. Both Mr. 
Lubbock and the Messrs. Paget, also, refer to a reward 
of one sovereign, offered by Mr. Girdlestone, to any 
one who could bring him a specimen of this bird shot 
in our marshes in summer. In July, 1825, a fenman 
named Hewitt, brought him one which he had watched, 
from time to time, from the beginning of May, in a 
swamp near his house. On the 2nd of July he went 
to look for it in order to claim his reward, and found it 
in the old spot so sluggish and feeble that after a little 
trouble he succeeded in knocking it down with his hat. 
This bird,t says Mr. Lubbock, to whom it was after- 
wards presented by Mr. Girdlestone, “was ragged in 
plumage, lean, and scurfy to a degree,” and no doubt 
had, either from disease or some previous injury, been 
unable to migrate. Mr. Girdlestone is also said to 
have “killed one in high feather, on Belton Bog, July 
21st, 1826,” possibly a very early arrival from the 
which he again put up and shot the following day. They proved 
to be only in a state of half change to their nesting plumage, and 
were both females. 
* In the “ Zoologist” for 1849 (p. 2456), Mr. P. E. Hansell, of 
Thorpe, near Norwich, states that on the 2nd of May, in the 
marshes between Thorpe and Postwick, he flushed a jack snipe, 
but “in a very weak state and could hardly fly.” But no reliance 
can, of course, be placed on the assertion of the Norwich bird- 
stuffer, who told Mr. Hansell that one or two nests had been 
taken here in that year. 
+ This occurred in May, not June, as stated by Messrs. Paget. 
See Lubbock’s “ Fauna,” p. 82, and his communication to Yarrell 
(“ British Birds,” vol. iii. p. 36). 
{ I have recently examined this bird in Mr. Newcome’s collec- 
tion, at Feltwell, to whom it was presented by Mr. Lubbock. 
