STONE-CUKLEW. 53 



western parts of the county, yet judging from the 

 localities in which a few scattered pairs are still met 

 with, during the breeding season, in the neighbourhood 

 of Norwich, it seems strange that Sir Thomas should 

 not have obtained a specimen, for his purpose, much 

 nearer home. 



Like its big cousin the great bustard, though by 

 no means in the same degree, the stone-curlew, even 

 as a summer visitant, has been affected by those 

 vast agricultural changes which, dating back from the 

 commencement of the present century, have changed 

 so materially the general aspect of the country and con- 

 tracted everywhere the boundaries of the heath and the 

 fen. As a ground breeder, also, its eggs are peculiarly 

 liable to accident, and this, combined with the wholesale 

 system of egging pursued of late years, might alone ac- 

 count for the diminution of a species which, laying only 

 two eggs at a time, is necessarily limited in its powers of 

 reproduction. Compared, however, with the wild open 

 tracts of the "Breck" district, the eastern side of the 

 county can at no time have possessed the same amount 

 of attraction for these birds, as even the former locality 

 continues to afford; whilst the enclosure, on all sides, 

 of heaths and commons., and the rapid growth of planta- 

 tions on our once bleak soils, is fast depriving them, both 

 towards the north and east, of the few haunts once 

 favourable to their retiring habits. 



In the immediate neighbourhood of Norwich, as at 

 Costessy, Easton, and Bowthorpe, the stone-curlew, until 

 within the last twenty or five and twenty years, bred 

 regularly on the higher grounds, frequenting for that 

 purpose certain large open fields, to which even here the 

 term " Breck " is not uncommonly applied, whilst at 

 Thorpe one or two pairs are still met with every spring. 

 Tracing out, however, on the map, the localities from 

 whence I have known either birds or eggs procured 



