GLOSSY IBIS. 191 



IBIS FALCINELLUS (Gmel.) 

 GLOSSY IBIS. 



Mr. Lubbock, in 1845, thus wrote of this rare species, 

 " Fifty years back it was seen often enough to be 

 known to gunners and fishermen as the black curlew,*" 

 but now a straggler or two at long and uncertain 

 intervals is an important event in local ornithology, and 

 the bird itself, if procured, a coveted possession by all 

 local collectors. In the various stages of plumage, 

 however, to which the terms glossy, bay, and green have 

 been applied by authors, this Ibis has been killed in 

 Norfolk in many well-authenticated instances, the first 

 of which I can find any exact record being the bird 

 stated by Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear to have 

 been seen by them, and "shot in the winter of 1818, 

 in the marshes on the western coast of Norfolk, near 

 Lynn ;" adding, moreover, " that it did not appear to 

 have attained its full plumage, from the circumstance 

 of its having four transverse bars of white on its 

 throat." From the same authors we also learn that " in 

 the month of May, 1822, three birds of this species 

 were seen at Hockwold [fen], in Norfolk." Two of 

 them were killed, and are in the possession of the 

 Eev. Henry Tilney, of that place." One of these, in 

 adult plumage, is now in Mr. Newcome's collection, at 

 Feltwell, from whom I recently ascertained that the 

 other (both having been shot by Mr. Tilney), was, 

 unfortunately, not preserved. The last two are also 

 noticed in Mr. Lombe's MS. notes, as killed in June, 

 not May, which is, I believe, correct. Next in point of 

 date, are the pair recorded by the Messrs. Paget as 



* Under this name it is possibly the species meant in the old 

 adage 



"The curlew be she white or black, 

 Carries twelve-pence on her back." 



