NOTES AND QUERIES. 79 



mid-stream, when there must have been fully twenty degrees of frost. As 

 a fly-fisher I have for many years wandered by the sides of mountain and 

 moorland streams, favourite haunts of the Dipper, during the spring and 

 summer, and yet, strange to say, I only remember once to have heard its 

 song at a season which would seem more appropriate to it. — Murray A. 

 Mathew (Stonehall, Wolfscistle, Pembrokeshire). 



The Red-legged Partridge in North Norfolk. — It having been 

 stated by some that the Red-legged, or as we call it the "French," 

 Partridge was very scarce this season, and knowing that a wet summer is 

 always said to affect them more than the English Partridge, I have collected 

 particulars of bags made between the 1st and 20th of October, near Cromer, 

 which give a proportion of about eleven Euglish birds to every Red-leg. 

 But very much depends on locality ; thus of forty-one killed at Trim- 

 mingham ten were Red-legs, but this was always a favourite place for them, 

 while forty-four killed at Northrepps, adjoining, were English to a bird. 

 There is no doubt that, under the modern system of " driving," they suffer 

 more than they used to do when the plan was to walk the turnips, and the 

 wary Red-legs might be seen topping the hedges far out of shot. Last year 

 I knew of an instance at Plumstead, near Norwich, in which sixty-four 

 Red-legs were killed out of 110 Partridges, but this was very exceptional, 

 and mostly on rough ground, which they like. That the dislike formerly 

 shown to Red-legs is decreasing is certain, and no sportsman who cares 

 about "driving," at which they afford the finest sport, ever thinks of 

 destroying their eggs. Mr. Stevenson, in his article on the Red-legged 

 Partridge as a Norfolk bird (' Birds of Norfolk,' vol. i., p. 411), mentions 

 their habit of perching on trees, but in this respect they have now adopted 

 the habits of their English cousins, and though I have shot at an old 

 Red-leg as he flew out of a hedgerow oak-tree, the circumstance was so very 

 exceptional as to be the only occasion on which I have seen one perching. 

 It may also be partly owing to the yearly diminution of suitable hedgerow 

 timber, and the fact that no young trees are planted since the plan of 

 turning cattle into the fields became general, and the ash in particular, 

 which must once have been a very favourite hedgerow-timber, is completely 

 dying out in Norfolk, and so bad is it for the land that none are planted, 

 though it fetches a price equal to the best oak. —J. H. Gurney, Jun- 

 (Northrepps, Norwich). 



Variety of Wheatear and other Birds.— When staying at Scar- 

 borough I went to Filey, and at Brown's, the taxidermist, I obtained a 

 pretty variety of the Wheatear. Its back, shoulders, neck, and top of head 

 were white, here and there speckled with minute grey spots. It was a 

 bird of the year. At Scarborough also I obtained a cream-coloured Hedge- 

 sparrow, pied Lark, and a Ringed Plover with the back a pale drab colour. 



