310 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



CORACIAS GARRULA, Linnseus. 



EOLLEE. 



* 



This beautiful species, though an extremely rare 

 visitant, has occurred in several well authenticated 

 instances in this county, as will be seen from the 

 following records, which I have collected from every 

 available source; but, except in two or three cases, 

 I have been wholly unable to trace the specimens or 

 ascertain their existence in collections at the present 

 time. The late Mr. Hunt, in a communication to 

 Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear (Catalogue of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk Birds), respecting a Suffolk specimen, killed 

 at Bungay in September, 1817, remarks: "I am also 

 credibly informed that another specimen of the same 

 bird was killed in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth about 

 the same time * * * and late in the spring of 1818 

 another was killed in the neighbourhood of Cromer." 

 Strangely enough, in Messrs. Paget's e Sketch,' there 

 is no mention of the Roller as having appeared near 

 Yarmouth, and only a Suffolk specimen, killed at 

 Blundestone in May, 1831, is noticed in Sir W. J. 

 Hooker's MS. notes of the same district. I have 

 recently ascertained, however, through Mr. Eising, of 

 Horsey, that a male in the possession of Mr. E. F. 

 Whaites, of Ingham, was shot in February, 1824, at 

 Waxham, near Yarmouth, by a man named Tuck, the 



states, that in the stomach of a young cuckoo, dissected by him- 

 self, were about twenty fall-grown caterpillars of the peacock 

 butterfly (Papilio lo) undigested. The hairy coating observable in 

 the stomachs of these birds is apparently a specific peculiarity, and 

 not attributable, as supposed by some, to their preference for 

 hairy caterpillars. 



