340 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



month..* On the 29th of May, 1853, a single bird was 

 shot at Hickling, but no more were seen. Mr. Lubbock 

 with the late Mr. Girdlestone found a pair of jack snipes 

 on Brad well Common, on the 1st of May, 1827 ;f but 

 a farther search on the 8th proved fruitless. Both Mr. 

 Lubbock and the Messrs. Paget, also, refer to a reward 

 of one sovereign, offered by Mr. Girdlestone, to any 

 one who could bring him a specimen of this bird shot 

 in our marshes in summer. In July, 1825, a fenman 

 named Hewitt, brought him one which he had watched, 

 from time to time, from the beginning of May, in a 

 swamp near his house. On the 2nd of July he went 

 to look for it in order to claim his reward, and found it 

 in the old spot so sluggish and feeble that affcer a little 

 trouble he succeeded in knocking it down with his hat. 

 This bird,J says Mr. Lubbock, to whom it was after- 

 wards presented by Mr. Girdlestone, " was ragged in 

 plumage, lean, and scurfy to a degree," and no doubt 

 had, either from disease or some previous injury, been 

 unable to migrate. Mr. Girdlestone is also said to 

 have " killed one in high feather, on Belton Bog, July 

 21st, 1826," possibly a very early arrival from the 



which he again put up and shot the following day. They proved 

 to be only in a state of half change to their nesting plumage, and 

 were both females. 



* In the "Zoologist" for 1849 (p. 2456), Mr. P. E. Hansell, of 

 Thorpe, near Norwich, states that on the 2nd of May, in the 

 marshes between Thorpe and Postwick, he flushed a jack snipe, 

 but " in a very weak state and could hardly fly." But no reliance 

 can, of course, be placed on the assertion of the Norwich bird- 

 stufier, who told Mr. Hansell that one or two nests had been 

 taken here in that year. 



f This occurred in May, not June, as stated by Messrs. Paget. 

 See Lubbock's " Fauna," p. 82, and his communication to Yarrell 

 ("British Birds," vol. iii. p. 36). 



I have recently examined this bird in Mr. Newcome's collec- 

 tion, at Feltwell, to whom it was presented by Mr. Lubbock. 



