138 BIEDS OF NORFOLK. 



Gould, which were sent him alive, from Didlington, by 

 Mr. Amhurst ; but I also saw some young ones in 1859 as 

 early as the 26th of March, which shows, that like rooks 

 and other birds they are in this respect influenced by 

 mild or backward seasons. By the first week in March 

 Mr. Newcome tells me he used always to have a flight 

 at " passage" herons,* and for many years I have noted 

 the appearance of these birds over the city not later than 

 the middle of March, passing to and from the surround- 

 ing marshes to the heronry at Earlham. Mr. Lubbock, 

 as a proof of the extended flights occasionally made 

 by these birds in search of food, states that formerly, 

 at Keswick "the flounder, called provincially 'butt,' 

 was often found under the trees in the breeding season," 

 and adds "these butts must have been brought from 

 Burgh flats at the back of Yarmouth ;" this, however, 

 though by no means improbable, cannot be accepted as 

 a fact, inasmuch as Mr. Gurney has known small 

 flounders to be taken as high up the Norwich river 

 as the New Mills. It is also remarkable, as noticed 

 by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher, " that when the herons 

 drop any of the food, which they bring to their 

 young amongst the trees of the heronry, they make 

 no attempt to recover it, but, probably from a con- 

 sciousness of their inability to rise from the ground in a 

 confined space, allow it to remain where it falls." Thus 

 the Earlham keeper tells me he has frequently picked 

 up large eels and other fish in a perfectly fresh state, 



* " Passage herons" in falconry are those at which hawks are 

 flown as they pass overhead, either to or from the heronry, generally 

 at a great height. In the old days of the sport, the more usual 

 mode was to spring the heron from the water-side and let loose 

 the hawk at it as it rose, The quarry then speedily took to the 

 water again, and the whole " flight" as may be easily imagined was 

 of a character quite different from that of the aerial combat of 

 modern times. 



