Birds. 9495 



December 11. Saw a flock of twites near the city, and some half 

 dozen were netted a few days later : these birds are rather uncertain 

 winter visitants in Norfolk, and are never, I think, very plentiful : 

 I have not noticed any, or heard of them in our bird-catchers' hands, 

 since the winter of 1861. Siskins and redpoles, both lesser and 

 mealy, have been very scarce this season. Several fine bramblings 

 have been brought in lately to be stuffed, and are in perfect winter 

 plumage. 



An extremely dark variety of the barn owl, a female, was shot near 

 Norwich, on the 13lh, and is particularly interesting from its resem- 

 blance, in colour and markings, to a specimen in the Raptorial Col- 

 lection of the Norwich Museum, presented by Professor Reinhardt. 

 Of the latter the Professor writes, in a letter to Mr. A. Newton 

 (October 9lh, 1860), " The bird is from Fyen (Funen), but it is, I think, 

 no peculiar race, at least not peculiar to the said island, where 

 the bird is rare ; I should rather suppose that all the examples of 

 Strix flammea from Sleswig-Holstein and the northern parts of Ger- 

 many are nearly as dark beneath as the specimens you saw in Copen- 

 hagen." Our Norfolk example of this singularly dark variety, which 

 it is quite possible may have come across from the Danish locality 

 referred to by Professor Reinhardt, has the whole of the lower surface 

 of the body rich reddish fawn-colour ; the facial disk rusty red, be- 

 coming grayish white only near the outer edge, with the upper portions 

 of the plumage ash-gray spotted as usual, but with very little inter- 

 mixture of buff. 



On the 15lh of December a young carrion crow was killed out of a 

 flock of rooks, near this city, an old rook being killed at the same dis- 

 charge of the gun : these birds evidently associate with the rooks at 

 this season, and their doing so will account for the statements of some 

 individuals, that rooks have been seen to leave their companions when 

 on the wing, to pursue some small bird with carnivorous intentions. 

 A bittern was shot out of some reedy ponds at Hempstead, near Holt, 

 on the 16th. On the 17lh a male gray phalarope was sent me from 

 Salthouse beach, a very favourite locality for this species ; and on the 

 21st I purchased, in our fish-market, a magnificent old male velvet 

 scoter, caught alive that morning (having been previously wounded) 

 on the beach at Sherringham, and others were seen at the same time : 

 the colour of the beak and legs in this specimen, when I first saw it, 

 was lovely in the extreme ; the former rich orange-red and the latter 

 vermilion, with the webs dark chocolate-brown : the nail of the beak 

 was also of the most delicate pink, and the eyerids pearl-white. Two 



