268 BIRD NOTES FROM EAST ANGLIA 



who regard the practice of pinioning birds as of a piece 

 with that resorted to by men of certain Asiatic tribes, who 

 slit the noses of their brides in order to ensure conjugal 

 fidelity. I think I have already recorded the gradual 

 disappearance of my fleet of Carolina summer-ducks, 

 which, though generously fed in the sanctuary lake, 

 persisted in nocturnal expeditions to the seacoast, and 

 helped to fill the bags of flight-shooters. A friend on 

 the east coast, whose better success in keeping his flock 

 of summer-ducks together has stirred my envy these 

 many years past, lost the whole of them in the winter 

 of 1906-7. Probably the passage of a large flight of 

 indigenous wild-fowl proved too powerful an attrac- 

 tion to the foreigners, and they have all gone, never, 

 I fear, to return. 



So the flamingoes, reported by Mr. Gurney as having 

 been shot on August 23 on Morston Sands, and in 

 November somewhere in Holland, doubtless were 

 deserters from the Duke of Bedford's wonderful collec- 

 tion at Woburn or Lady Dunleath's park in Ireland. 



The birds, whose obituary is recorded in Mr. Gurney's 

 sorrowful note, are in a different category. There is no 

 reason to suppose that they were other than truly wild 

 birds on passage. 



' Sept. 3. A little flock of glossy ibises seen on Breydon 

 Broad. . . . They were soon disposed of, for I presume they 

 are the same which were shot in three different places in Ire- 

 land and one in Sussex shortly afterwards. Another was 

 killed in Devonshire.' 



Though never likely to choose these blood-boultered 



