284 BIRDS OE NORFOLK. 



FRATERCULA ARCTICA (Linnams). 

 PUFFIN. 



This species, although met with occasionally off the 

 Norfolk coast, is by no means so frequent as might be 

 expected ; possibly it may be more numerous some dis- 

 tance out at sea, where I have occasionally seen a few old 

 birds in summer ; but it is certainly best known to us as 

 a storm-driven stranger, and as such has been picked up 

 far inland. Sir Thomas Browne says of " Anas arctica 

 Clusiiy wch though hee placeth about the Faro Islands 

 is the same wee call a puffin . . . sometimes taken 

 upon our seas ;" and Hunt thus writes of this species : 

 " We have had them sent to us in the months of Feb- 

 ruary and December, and we have two specimens now 

 before us taken alive from off the beach, at Cromer (after 

 a violent storm) on the 4th day of November, 1819. 

 There were great numbers cast on shore at Wells and 

 other parts of the Norfolk coast." 



Mr. Dowell says the " sea parrot " is " found off the 

 Norfolk coast during the latter end of summer and 

 autumn, but is never common," and mentions one having 

 been caught alive on the shore at Blakeney, on 1st 

 December, 1846, during rough weather, with a northerly 

 wind; and the remains of another found on the 18th 

 of the same month. Mr. Stevenson has notes of three 

 specimens procured in February, 1860, at Winterton, 

 Palling, and Wells, all of which, he says, judging from 

 the size and form of their beaks, were young birds.* A 



* Puffins, with remarkably small bills, are occasionally met 

 with on the Norfolk coast. Mr. J. H. Gurney tells me he had 

 such a bird sent to him in the flesh, which was shot at Yar- 

 mouth, on the 26th December, 1884 ; he has also one which was 

 picked up dead at Cley, in September, 1888 ; and Mr. Pashley, of 

 Cley, has stuffed several presenting the same peculiarity. Pro- 

 fessor Newton tells me that one in the Newcome collection was 

 bought at Lynn as a u greenland dovekey." These examples were, 

 1 believe, all young birds of the year; indeed, so rare is the 

 adult puffin on the Norfolk coast in winter that I do not remember 

 ever to have seen one which was procured at that season, and 

 it appears that the process of development of the singular form 

 of bill in this species has not attracted the attention which so 



