8 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



collection is not correct, since, as before stated, it was 

 purchased for Lord Hunting-field, Mr. Spalding bidding 

 up to £5. Since that time, however, this noble falcon 

 has been fully installed amongst the Norfolk rarities, 

 from the occurrence of an undoubtedly wild specimen 

 at Beeston, near Cromer, in February, 1848. This 

 beautiful example, a fine adult male, is in the pos- 

 session of Mr. J. Gurney Hoare, of Hampstead. In the 

 "Zoologist," p. 3028, will also be found a notice by 

 Mr. T. Fowell Buxton, of a falcon, supposed, from its 

 *^ snowy whiteness," to be of this species, which was 

 seen by himself and other gentlemen whilst shooting 

 at Trimingham, on the same part of the coast, in 

 November, 1851. In the adjoining county of Suffolk, 

 large white falcons have been observed on more than 

 one occasion, though not of late years ; and a man 

 named Martin, formerly keeper to John Lee Earr, Esq., 

 of North Cove HaU, assured Mr. Spalding'^ that he 

 once shot a " large white hawk" at Cove, which he had 

 watched for some nights, always making for a par- 

 ticular wood to roost, and which, from his description, 

 as being pure white with a few black spots, was most 

 probably a Greenland falcon. Unfortunately, the bird 

 was given to a farmer and was not preserved. The 

 distinctions established of late years by Mr. Hancock 

 and other eminent ornithologists, between the three 

 forms of great northern falcons, viz., the Greenland 

 falcon (F. candicans, Gmel.), the Iceland falcon (F. 

 islandicus, Gmel.), and the true gyrfalcon, of Norway 

 {F. gyrfalco, Linn.), render it particularly desirable 

 that all British-killed specimens of these noble birds 

 should be fully identified. As the white or Greenland 



* Mr. T. M. Spalding, of "Westleton, and formerly of Ditching- 

 ham, in Norfolk, contributed the excellent list of Suflfolk birds to 

 Suckling's history of that county. 



