lO NOTES ON CERTAIN BIRDS 



Larus alba or puets in such plentie about Horsey that 

 they sometimes bring them in carts to norwich & sell 

 them at small rates. & the country people make use of 

 their egges in puddings & otherwise, great plentie 

 thereof haue bred about scoulton [mere struck oui\ 

 meere, & from thence sent to London. 



Larus cinereus greater & smaller, butt a coars meat, 

 commonly called sternes. 



Hirundo marina or sea swallowe a neat white & forked 

 tayle bird butt longer then a swallowe. 



The ciconia or stork" I have seen in the fennes & 

 some haue been shot in the marshes between this 

 and yarmouth. [See also third letter to Merrett and 

 Appendix D.] 



\Fol. 8.] The platea or shouelard/'^ wch build upon 

 the topps of high trees, they haue formerly built in the 

 Hernerie at claxton & Reedham now at Trimley in 

 Suffolk, they come in march & are shot by fowlers not 

 for their meat butt the handsomenesse of the same, 



^^ Although it has been met with in Norfolk, more frequently than 

 perhaps in any other part of England, the Stork was never other than a 

 tare spring and autumn visitor to Norfolk. Turner writes of it in 1544 as 

 unknown in England, save as a captive, and Merrett a hundred years later 

 says it rarely flies hither, which is equally true at the present time. Hewit- 

 son (" Eggs of Brit. Birds," Ed. 3, ii., p. 309 ; under Crane) was evidently 

 misled by some remarks made by Evelyn, who visited Sir Thomas Browne 

 in Norwich in October, 1671, and says in his diary that he saw Browne's 

 "Collection of the eggs of all the fowl and birds he could procure ; that 

 country, especially the promontory of Norfolk, being frequented, as he 

 said, by several birds which seldom or never go further into the land — 

 as cranes, storks, eagles, and a variety of water-fowl." From this 

 Hewitson infers that the Stork bred in Norfolk, a construction which the 

 somewhat ambiguously worded passage will certainly not bear. I imagine 

 collections of eggs were not very common in Browne's time. 



^^ This interesting record has recently been supplemented by a much 

 earlier record of the breeding of the " Popeler, " or Shovelard, in Norfolk. 

 Professor Newton ("Transactions of N. and N. Nat. Soc," vi., p. 

 158) has called attention to an ancient document bearing date A.D. 1300, 



