PREFACE. VU 



work. Under these circumstances, I determined to adopt 

 the former alternative, and rather than divide so im- 

 portant and well defined a group as the Anatidce, I have 

 closed the present volume with the Grallce. 



In treating of this large and most important group, 

 so extensively represented, both in residents and mi- 

 grants, within the bounds of this county, I have taken 

 much pains to trace out the history of such species 

 as have ceased altogether to breed in Norfolk; thus 

 for all time to establish facts, which, years hence, under 

 the altered condition of the soil, might be scarcely 

 credited. But for the testimony of Sir Thomas Browne, 

 modern ornithologists would never have supposed that 

 the Spoonbill nested in Norfolk some two hundred 

 years ago, and yet, with the exception of the Cormorant, 

 no other indigenous species appears to have been lost 

 to this county from the reign of Charles II. until the 

 early part of the present century. Since that time, how- 

 ever, beside the Great Bustard, and from causes which I 

 have elsewhere treated of, no less than three species, 

 once abundant in our marshes and fens during the 

 breeding season, have become altogether extinct the 

 Avocet, the Black Tern, and the Black-Tailed Godwit ; 

 while the Ruff and Reeve, represented only by a few 

 pairs and in but one locality, must shortly be added to 

 the list if the timely protection of the law be not invoked 

 to prevent it. So strong is, I believe, the attachment 

 of certain birds to the place of their birth, and so un- 

 erring the instinct which directs them, though absent 

 in winter, to return year after year to the same spot, 

 that, provided only a single pair survives to represent 

 an indigenous race, the ancestral haunt will not be 

 deserted ; but if that last native pair be destroyed their 

 place is rarely,* if ever, again filled, even though many 



* As exceptions may be mentioned, the Hen Harrier and Mon- 

 tagu's Harrier, which still, occasionally, remain to nest in our 



