254 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



tive warnings to hurry onwards to their northern breed- 

 ing grounds. But though thus passing over us with a 

 marvellous regularity, it is not every season that affords 

 a harvest to the gunners. A cold backward spring, 

 with a long succession of north-east winds, will so delay 

 the passage of these birds, as well as many other 

 migrants, that with the first favourable change they 

 press forward almost unnoticed, resting scarcely for a 

 night to recruit their strength. On the other hand, 

 with a prevalence of south-west winds, at the appointed 

 time, and more particularly, I am told, if accompanied 

 by a light drizzling rain, the " muds " of Breydon 

 and Blakeney are alike gay with their many tinted 

 groups, and the records in my own notes of the numbers 

 killed at such times, not of godwits only, but of knots, 

 sanderlings, turnstones, and such like, within the space 

 of a few days, fully proves the effect of these atmos- 

 pherical influences. 



Such a season was that of 1855, and even more 

 remarkable that of 1866, when, through the kind- 

 ness of my friend Mr. F. Frere, of Yarmouth, I had 

 the opportunity of dissecting some eighteen or twenty 

 bar-tailed godwits, all procured on Breydon, and satis- 

 fying myself as to the relative proportions of males 

 and females, and the intensity or otherwise of the 

 colouring of both sexes in their nuptial dress. Of this 

 interesting series I have now fifteen skins in my own 

 possession, from which the following notes have been 

 made, and as the chance of taking accurate measure- 

 ments in the flesh from so many examples but rarely 

 occurs, I believe many of my readers will be interested 

 in the result of my examinations. 



On the 7th of May I received two remarkably fine 

 birds, which had probably been selected from their rich 

 colouring, both of which proved to be males : 



No. 1. Male, adult. All the under surface of the plumage 



