453 



Mr. Stevenson has kindly placed at my disposal the proof sheets of his forthcoming 3rd vol. 

 of the ' Birds of Norfolk,' from which I extract the following notes, viz. : — " From local records 

 it would seem that even so late as the commencement of the present century ' Barganders,' or 

 ' Burrow-Ducks,' as they are called in some parts of the county, nested here and there throughout 

 the entire range of sandhills bordering the Norfolk coast, which are broken only by the lofty 

 cliffs that extend some twenty miles between Happisburgh and Weyborne. On the north and 

 west of our extensive sea-board the flat shores of the Wash, between Lynn and Hunstanton, and 

 thence in an easterly direction to Blakeney and Cley, the ' meals ' and mussel-' scalps,' bays, creeks, 

 and other tidal inlets have afforded at all seasons the most favourable feeding-grounds. 



" In the neighbourhood of Yarmouth the long range of sandhills, locally termed ' marrams ' 

 from the grasses which bind the loose soil together, afforded in extensive rabbit-warrens every 

 facility for the peculiar nesting-habits of this species, to which its extermination on that side of 

 the county early in the present century, if not before, is no doubt attributable — since Hunt, in his 

 ' British Ornithology,' published in 1815, remarks, ' they were formerly numerous at Winterton ; 

 but being supposed to disturb the rabbits, considerable pains were taken to destroy as many as 

 possible.' And this seems to have been done so effectually that all my enquiries have failed to 

 identify them since, during the breeding-season, with that locality 



" It would seem, however, that even of late years these birds have not entirely confined their 

 choice of nesting-places to our coast sandhills, provided the accommodation of rabbit's burrows 

 could be obtained elsewhere, as Mr. Robert Wells, of Heacham, informs me that some thirty 

 years ago Sheld Ducks bred upon the heaths at Dersingham and Sandringham, and a pair of 

 wild birds once hatched their young in a rabbit's burrow on his farm at Sedgeford, each of these 

 localities being about three miles distant from the nearest point of the coast 



"At the present time the few pairs that spend their summer in Norfolk are to be met with 

 only on that portion of our coast which extends from Holme, near Hunstanton, to the harbour 

 at Cley. When staying at Hunstanton in June 1863, I saw single birds of this species on one 

 or two occasions, near Holme Point, passing from the sandhills to their feeding-grounds at low 

 water ; and in the same neighbourhood, Mr. Wells informs me, a pair still nested in 1874. At 

 Brancaster, in 1866, Mr. F. Norgate found the remains of egg-shells at the mouth of a rabbit's 

 burrow, apparently those of the Sheld Duck, in the month of July ; and young birds, as I learn 

 from Mr. Beverley Leeds, were taken there both in that and succeeding years; and so late as 

 the year 1874 Mr. Wells knew of three pairs that frequented that part of the coast throughout 

 the summer. In 1853 Mr. Thos. Southwell found empty egg-shells of this species on the ' meals ' 

 about Wells, and was informed that a pair or two nested there every season; but in August 1872 

 Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., ascertained that none had bred there that summer, but was told by a 

 local gunner that in the previous year he had taken an old bird and eleven eggs out of one nest- 

 hole. At Blakeney, in 1872, Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., found four young birds in the channel 

 early in August, the remains of a much larger brood observed earlier in the season. Another 

 pair were also said to have nested in the same locality ; and in May of that year he saw a pair 

 of old birds in the channel at Cley. As late, also, as the summer of 1874 I had reliable 

 information that they still resort to the sandhills on the Blakeney beach, the extreme eastern 

 limit of the Sheld Duck's nesting-range on the Norfolk coast; and this is the more satisfactory 



