NOTES FROM NORFOLK FOR 1878. 155 
which they are both familiar, and after watching a few minutes 
they saw a bird flit along a ditch overgrown with thick herbage 
and settle within ten yards of them, where its Nightingale-like 
plumage, size, and form, confirmed their first impression. Though 
looked for several times after it was not seen again. 
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.—An adult male of this species 
was shot on the 5th, at Heydon, where a Great Spotted Wood- 
pecker was also killed on the 23rd of March. 
Sanderling.— An adult bird shot at Yarmouth on the 11th 
was still in full winter plumage, not a feather indicating the 
spring change of colour. 
Singular Habit in a Blackbird.—A cock Blackbird which had 
a nest this month in my neighbour’s garden, used constantly, 
whilst his mate was sitting, to perch on a projecting part of the 
stone parapet of the house, fronting the public road, and from 
thence pour forth his song, apparently as much at home in that 
novel situation as a Starling would be. 
May. 
Magpie.—About the first week in May a single Magpie 
was seen on a fence in the Earlham fields, within a mile of 
the city. 
Waders killed in the ‘“ Close-time.’—About the first week in 
this month two Avocets and a White Stork were sent up to 
Norwich from Yarmouth. An Avocet was seen about the same 
time (probably one of those killed), feeding by the margin of a 
brackish pool near the fishing-pier at Lowestoft, and on the 8th 
of June another was shot on Breydon. 
Marsh Harrier.—This species, the very genius loci, in former 
days, as Richard Lubbock termed it, is not quite extinct in 
our “Broad district” as a resident. On the 9th of May, at 
Ranworth, one was seen by my informant to seize a duckling, 
about five weeks old, within a comparatively short distance of 
where he was standing, and no doubt, from the boldness of 
the swoop, the bird had a nest close by. The same bird, or its 
mate, was seen shortly before to carry off a Lapwing from a field 
in the same locality, where a labouring man was at work. Four 
eggs of this species were taken from a nest in that neighbourhood 
earlier in the season, 
