VOL. XV.] ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES. 279 



to have been a Hobby, but as its identification was not 

 certain, it is omitted from the classified notes. 



As for agriculture, our farmers were almost in despair 

 when they looked at the rootless fields, and at their wretched 

 crops of barley, but the wheat being deeper -rooted was better, 

 some of it yielding fourteen coombs to the acre at Keswick, 

 and eighteen at Hethel. 



The Autumn Migration. — The autumn provided its 

 customary arrivals of Rooks, Jackdaws and Starlings (these 

 were seen at Cromer Knoll Lt.-v.), and there was a particularly 

 strong movement of Skylarks on October 25th. Of all the 

 multitude of birds which make for Norfolk and Suffolk during 

 the migratory month of October, the Skylark is the most 

 numerous, and next comes the Starling, but what to put 

 third it would be hard to say. The question may be asked 

 where do these huge armies of Skylarks come from ? Probably 

 they collect from the plains of Germany and Poland, but 

 England can not be the ultimate destination of all of them. 

 This great Skylark invasion was not observed in Lincolnshire 

 by Mr. Caton Haigh ; on the other hand, he registered an 

 immense passage of Starlings on October 6th and 7th, two 

 very warm days, which does not appear to have had any 

 counterpart on our coast. Skylarks are sometimes spoken 

 of as being day migrants, but observations taken at our 

 east coast lightships by no means point to their being 

 exclusively so. Long ago my father's colleague, W. R. 

 Fisher, repeatedly detected their arrival at a very early hour 

 in the morning (see Zoologist, 1846, p. 1387), proving that 

 they had been in flight during a part of the night . Not only 

 this, but various later observations made by Mr. Patterson, 

 and others who live on the coast confirm Fisher's views. 

 Another point is that when these Skylarks come, their flocks 

 are often scattered over a very large front, and it is the same 

 with Rooks, Starlings, Chaffinches and other October migrants, 

 which are nearly always widely spread throughout a consider- 

 able area, although there may be intervals where few or 

 none make land. The theory of fixed lines of migration 

 across certain parts of the North Sea, which some have thought 

 they could discover, must therefore not be too strongly 

 insisted upon, at any rate Norfolk and Suffolk observations 

 fail to confirm any such lines of travel during the annual 

 autumn movement. 



It may be observed that while the Larks travel at a steady 

 pace they do not seem to hurry themselves. If they fly at 

 twenty-five miles an hour (which is Clarke's estimate), they 



