302 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



alarming note occurs in Mr. Lubbock's copy of Bewick, 

 where he states that they " used to breed in large num- 

 bers on the islands in Hiekling Broad; at present but 

 few scattered nests are there." From this neighbour- 

 hood I need not say it has long since disappeared in the 

 nesting season, as also from Ormesby, Hemsby, and 

 Winterton, where the late Mr. Rising remembered their 

 breeding ; and in the place last named Whitear found 

 this species, as well as the lesser and black terns, 

 breeding in 1816 and 1818. Salthouse, once a favourite 

 resort of this species, now knows it no more as a nesting 

 species ; and a former breeding place, on the marshes at 

 Holme, owing to drainage and cultivation, is also quite 

 deserted. Such being the case, it becomes necessary to 

 speak with caution respectmg the few remaining haunts 

 of this species on the Norfolk coast ; and I am sure all 

 true lovers of this beautiful bird will forgive me if I 

 refrain from particularly mentioning the sites of those 

 breeding-places to which I shall have to refer in what 

 follows. 



A correspondent writing to me in 1883, with regard 

 to a locality where twenty -five years ago I remember the 

 common and lesser terns breeding in very large numbers, 

 says that the colony of the former amounted to about 

 one hundred pairs; but that the eggs are very much 

 taken, and in August a great many of the young are 

 shot. Fortunately for the birds that are left, the sand- 

 hills blown up on what have once been "binks," or gravel- 

 ridges, that surround the locality, are let for the sake 

 of the rabbits which frequent them, and not only are 

 persons with guns warned off, but even indiscriminate 

 wandering over the hills is not permitted, so that the 

 terns have some protection. But this does not go far, 

 for he informed me that in a walk of five miles along a 

 line of coast where hundreds upon hundreds of common 

 terns used to breed so lately as ten years before (1873), 

 he did not count above six pairs, and his companion 

 assured him that at that time five hundred pairs were 

 breeding at a place where they now did not see more 

 than twenty. The man added that he had taken with 

 his own hands 170 eggs in a day, and that he was only 

 one of many who gathered them. My correspondent 



