1 INTRODUCTION. 



exceptions, chiefly in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 villages, was singularly destitute of trees. Hardly a 

 hedge existed, the ^' brecks" were merely separated by 

 ^' balks," left at first as mere track-ways, but eventually 

 raised by the drifting sand, when the adjoining land 

 was in fallow, a couple of feet or more in height. 



A country so open as this, and so unlike the rest of 

 the county, could not fail to differ from that in its bird- 

 population. Some of its peculiarities in this respect still 

 exist, others are remembered by men now living, more 

 are to be gathered by tradition, a few, perhaps, have 

 to be inferred. Thus we shall probably not be wrong 

 in recognizing in this district '^ the champian and fieldy 

 part" of Norfolk, spoken of by Sir Thomas Brown as 

 the resort in the severe winters of his day of the 

 Crane (Grus cinerea). The Sea-Eagle (Haliceetus 

 alhicilla) still almost annually visits the large Rab- 

 bit-warrens near Thetford, and when it was more 

 abundant in the northern parts of this island, may be 

 safely presumed to have been a more frequent visitor 

 to the rest of the district. Falcons, too, must always 

 have resorted plentifully to prey on the Partridges, 

 which are probably here more numerous than in any 

 other part of the kingdom. Kites (Milvus ictinus) 

 may have not uncommonly swept over this wide 

 expanse in quest of their prey — whether the Eabbits 

 which swarm on all sides, or the offal cast away by the 

 warreners in the operation of " hulking " them — but 

 the birds remembered still, by old men in the district, as 

 '* Kites " seem to have generally been what are now 

 called Harriers. Of passerine birds — the Sky-Lark has 

 probably been always the most numerous, though in 

 summer the sprightly Wheatear must have rivalled it 

 in numbers. The Warblers, the Titmice — in a word, 

 all the woodland-birds must have been nearly, if not 

 altogether, wanting till the hand of man clothed this 



