154 



BIRDS OP NORFOLK:. 



him to have been killed many years ago at Mixton, 

 near Bungay, Suffolk. 



BOTAURUS MINUTUS (Lmnams). 

 LITTLE BITTEK1SL 



Norfolk is not only remarkable for the number of 

 scarce species known to have occurred within its bound- 

 aries, but, also, as in the present instance, for the 

 number of specimens procured of birds, regarded as 

 rarities in any part of Great Britain. No doubt 

 from time immemorial the Little Bittern, as an occa- 

 sional straggler, has sought shelter in the luxuriant 

 herbage of the "Broad" district, nor is it at all 

 improbable that this species may even have remained 

 with us, at times, to breed,* having been found in pairs 



* Although believing in the possibility of the little bittern 

 having bred in Norfolk, I have no satisfactory evidence that 

 the eggs have ever been taken, and I think it, therefore, the more 

 necessary to refer to a note in the Huddersfield " Naturalist" for 

 1866 (vol. ii., p. 366), in which Mr. E. B. Sharpe states that he had 

 just added to his collection " the following genuine eggs collected in 

 Norfolk last season by a gentleman," viz., the yellow-billed cuckoo, 

 rock thrush, little bittern, golden oriole, roseate tern, and sandwich 

 tern. This marvellous statement, so strangely differing from my 

 local experience, led to further correspondence (vol. iii., pp. 22 

 and 45), and the discovery that the genuineness of these rare 

 Norfolk eggs rested solely on the word of a London dealer, the 

 gentleman who collected them having most conveniently left for 

 Norway. Norfolk is unquestionably a rich ornithological county, 

 and a most likely district for any mendacious dealer to assign for 

 rare eggs or birds which he desires to palm off as British, but the 

 selection, in this instance, was particularly unfortunate, inasmuch 

 as neither the yellow-billed cuckoo nor the rock-thrush have yet 

 been observed in Norfolk ; the roseate tern is only once recorded 



