NOTES FROM NORFOLK. 333 
victims of our fickle climate no sooner reach our shores than the 
keen winds by day and frosts at night compel them to seek the 
thickest shelter in our woods and plantations that a backward 
vegetation can afford; and many days may have elapsed from the 
time of their arrival before some sunny morning tempts them into 
song, and betrays their presence amongst us. Mr. T. W. Cremer, 
of Beeston-by-the-sea, writing on the 23rd of April, speaks of the 
warblers just over as in a wretched plight from the cold; some 
Redstarts seen a few days before looked as if they must die, and 
many, no doubt, of various species did succumb. 
At Palgrave, near Diss, Mr. Ringer informs me that several 
Nightingales were picked up dead, and the same thing occurred at 
the Ipswich Arboretum. Swallows and House Martins suffered 
severely from the effects of cold nights and the paucity of insect 
food, and many, no doubt, died in exposed parts of the county. 
Even after nesting had commenced, the Martins in some localities 
were observed to forsake their nests, if built with a northerly 
aspect. Though plentiful near the coast the small number of 
Swallows and House Martins breeding in our inland towns and 
villages was quite a matter of comment, and that, even, in 
the vicinity of our broads, where insect food might most be 
looked for. They were very late before they left the rivers and 
marshy grounds to seek their usual nesting-places, and it was not 
till the last week in May that I observed them in the streets of 
this city and its suburbs. The Sand Martins, more sheltered in 
their nest holes, seemed, by the numbers I saw in autumn to have 
been more favoured, though hard put to it for food on their first 
arrival. The Swifts arriving later escaped such privations, and 
were unusually noisy throughout the summer. On the 30th of 
August I counted twenty-eight chasing one another in the evening 
round the steeple of Cromer church. 
Young Rooks suffered, with other arboreal species, from cold 
and “short commons,” and the number found dead under the 
trees in many places was traceable to gales at the time. With 
most of our Finches and Warblers, I believe, the first broods were 
either not reared at all or but a small proportion survived, and 
certainly one of the most marked and depressing features of bird 
life in the summer of 1879 was the absence of song. 
If such was the fate, however, of the birds of the uplands, 
what of the denizens of the broads and marsh-lands ?—ground- 
