NOTES FROM EAST NORFOLK. 295 



that they annually appear about the 5th of March. I do not 

 know any prettier sight than to see the old hen Grebe, with her 

 young ones on her back, with her beautiful crest and tippet raised 

 to the utmost in her agitation, and I was not sorry that the 

 eggs were hatched off, for the sake of seeing this, to me, more 

 interesting spectacle. On pulling up the nest, for the chance of 

 an addled egg being left behind, I found the middle of it quite 

 hot, — in fact, a regular natural incubator, — and I fancy that the 

 bird must have left it just before we saw her. 



Two of the Honey Buzzards mentioned in my last notes on 

 Norfolk birds (Zool. 1881, p. 487) are dead. We obtained wasps' 

 nests for them far into the winter, but " butcher's lights" finally 

 killed them. My father has been feeding the third one for some 

 time past entirely on sparrows' eggs. When I had them I tried them 

 with raspberry jam, which they ate, but their favourite food was 

 the larvae of wasps. The insect itself is not touched — at any rate, 

 when the larva? are obtainable. The terrible gales, which bereft 

 us of so many fine trees in the autumn, blew down their cage, and 

 a singular instance of tameness in a bird of prey was exhibited by 

 one of them, which, possessing full powers of flight, allowed itself 

 to be recaptured a day or two afterwards by a boy holding out a 

 plate of meat. They are very quiet, sociable birds, but perhaps 

 the Buzzard recognised in the boy the same lad who had fed it a 

 few days before. Although it was late in November, when they 

 escaped, their instinct led them to two wasps' nests, and the 

 dexterity with which they scooped them out showed how well 

 adapted their comparatively feeble beak is for the purpose. 



It seems desirable that the interesting question raised by 

 Mr. E. T. Booth, in ' The Field,' whether the adult male Norfolk 

 Plover has, or has not, a fleshy tubercle at the base of the upper 

 mandible in the spring, should be settled this summer, and with 

 a view of contributing a small mite of information on the subject, 

 I would say that there are at present at Mr. Dack's, the bird- 

 stuffer at Holt, a male and female Norfolk Plover killed about 

 May 3rd and 15th, and which Mr. Dack, with whom I had had 

 some previous conversation on the subject, carefully dissected. 

 Neither of these has, or had, the slightest trace of a rounded knob 

 or protuberance ; but there are also in the shop a pair taken 

 three or four years ago (Mr. Dack believes in July), being set up 

 with the nestling and eggs, and one of them shows a very clear 



