Birds. 9575 



ordinary number of rednecked grebes which have visited our coast 

 during a period extending from about the first week in February to 

 the 25th of March. A few specimens invariably visit us in the winter 

 months, though but rarely remaining late enough in the spring to have 

 acquired the rich red throat of the breeding season ; but their numbers 

 of late, judging merely from the specimens brought to our birdstuffers 

 for preservation, or exposed for sale in our markets, have far exceeded 

 anything I have previously witnessed, or of which any local record, to 

 my knowledge, exists. I have myself examined, or have heard of on 

 reliable authority, at least five and thirty examples, brought into 

 Norwich alone, a large proportion of them between the 18th and 28th 

 of February, when from eight to ten were seen in a week, and these 

 have been brought, with but few exceptions, from the immediate 

 vicinity of the coast, as at Yarmouth, Salthouse and Blakeney. These 

 would appear to have formed a part, and probably a considerable part, 

 of a large flight, which, from some cause difficult to arrive at satis- 

 factorily, has visited our eastern and south-eastern counties during the 

 late severe winter, as from previous notes in the ' Zoologist' I find 

 they were simultaneously met with in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and 

 others were observed at the same time in the markets of Cambridge 

 and London. Of those killed in Norfolk the chief portion appears to 

 have been adult birds in full winter plumage, with perceptible tufts 

 on either side of the head, and their throats grayish brown. Here 

 and there a bird showed slight traces of the red patch, but not more 

 amongst the early than the later specimens, as of the two I noticed 

 myself as having most red on the throat, one was killed on the 10th 

 of February, the other on the 28th ; and an old male shot on the 25th 

 of March showed no indications whatever of this nuptial tint. The 

 stomachs of these birds, as usual, contained a mass of long curled 

 feathers, closely matted together, and stained a bright green from some 

 minute vegetable substance, apparently conferva?, from the surface of 

 the water. Mixed also with these were small flinty particles, but, in 

 such at least as I examined myself, no further indication of their usual 

 food than a strong fishy odour. 



Brambling. — These birds have been extremely plentiful throughout 

 the winter. Several still seen up to the 25th of March, the male birds 

 fast assuming the black head of the breeding season. Mr. Samuel 

 Blyth, a good naturalist and a very accurate observer, assures me that 

 whilst staying at Framingham, near Norwich, towards the end of 

 January, just previous to the late severe weather, he observed for 

 several successive days immense flights of birds passing low over the 



