38 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



or ten couples were hanging- for sale in our market 

 with other fowl, and the numbers observed at that time 

 along the shores of the Wash, from the mouth of Lynn 

 Estuary to Hunstanton and Holme Point, and thence 

 by Thornham and Brancaster to Holkham bay, were 

 described, by local gunners, as almost unprecedented. 



Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear remark, " the cry of 

 a flock of these birds very much resembles the noise of 

 a pack of hounds, and we have twice been deceived by 

 it." Though difficult of approach under ordinary circum- 

 stances, a long chance shot, wounding one or two, will 

 often, as Mr. Dowell informs me, afford further sport. 

 The flock will then settle again at no great distance, 

 and the gunner, re-loading, works his way quietly up to 

 them when, reluctant to leave the cripples -which are 

 slow to rise on the wing, the main body thus waiting 

 and waiting afford at last a "lumping" shot. With 

 the exception of a few taken of late years, in the long 

 nets occasionally erected upon the shores of the "Wash," 

 near Lynn, (vol. ii., p. 376), I am not aware that wild 

 geese have ever been netted in Norfolk, although Mr. 

 Gurney informs me that all those in Leadenhall Market, 

 from Holland, have their necks broken. 



A very great difference in size is remarkable in birds 

 of this species, as also in the colour of the under parts of 

 the plumage, which in some is very d'ark, and in others 

 so light as to be distinguishable at a considerable dis- 

 tance. At Blakeney, according to Mr. Dowell, the light 

 coloured birds, which are said not to associate with 

 the darker ones* and to be much tamer, have acquired 



not a bernacle, grey-lag goose, nor bean goose was seen ; and yet 

 the weather was sufficiently severe to compel the whooping swan 

 so far south. 



* This is not always the case, as Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., when 

 at Lynn in February, 1871, observed light and dark birds together, 

 and with a glass could distinguish one from the other at a very 

 considerable distance. 



