GOLDEN PLOVER. 71 



the winter months. Probably many of my readers have 

 remarked, at such times, the melodious notes of these 

 plover, which would seem to be uttered incessantly in 

 order to keep the whole body together ; and as this 

 always occurs when the nights are extremely dark, I 

 believe the birds, once drawn within the radius of the 

 city lights, become perfectly bewildered, and fly round 

 and round for hours, till, at day-break, the spell is 

 broken, and they resume at once their direct course of 

 flight; for, in no instance have I known, under such 

 circumstances, any unusual number observed in the 

 neighbourhood on the following morning. I have heard 

 them myself on more than one occasion, when sitting 

 up late, or from some cause unable to sleep, passing 

 and repassing over the house-tops throughout the night, 

 their plaintive cries now dying away in the distance, and 

 now again so loud and clear over head that it has seemed 

 as if a gun fired upwards at the sound must inevitably 

 do some execution amongst them ; since, though lost in 

 the darkness, the noise of their wings is at times quite 

 perceptible. 



The following are the dates on which occurrences 

 of this kind have come under my own notice during 

 the last sixteen or seventeen years, whether residing 

 in Norwich or in the immediate neighbourhood ; but it 

 is worthy of note that here, in every instance, these 

 birds have been heard either in autumn or winter, as I 

 have no record of any similar event, at other periods of 

 the year : * 



* That this does not, however, hold good, as a rule, is shown 

 by the following note, communicated by Mr. J. Morgan, of 

 Stratford-on-Avon, to the "Field" of March 31st, 1866, p. 273, which 

 is additionally interesting from the fact that various species were 

 actually picked up dead and examined on the following day ; thus 

 proving the miscellaneous character of this particular flight, and by 

 inference, also, of others, where many different notes have been 



