136 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
In another place Mr. le Strange meets with a 
“dow skrapp”; by a skrap or scrap we understand 
a place for pigeons or fowls to scratch and busk in. 
Again he comes across a ‘‘cowl dow” or pigeon coop, 
and a “cowle for ye hens at Anmer,’’ a manor about 
eight miles away, which formed a part of the demesne. 
In domestic accounts of this kind, Barn-door Fowls 
naturally figure frequently, and in the Hunstanton ledgers 
they are generally accounted for as “‘checons.” Once 
or twice only do we catch the name of cockerel or capon. 
Every farmstead or considerable house in East Anglia 
was no doubt supplied with Fowls, and especially Norfolk, 
which in the sixteenth century had come a good deal 
to the front.* Turkeyst and Guineafowls we could 
hardly look for in the Hunstanton farmyard, but the 
gaudy Peacock had long been a denizen of England, 
and must by this time have been well known in 
Norfolk. + 
Of this species the first notice is a payment in 1520 to 
the vicar of Thornham’s servant for bringing a Peahen, and 
three young Peahens, and six Plovers (p. 447)—twopence. 
The gratuity seems a small one, but later on (p. 540) only 
threepence is paid for another and a Goose thrown in to 
the bargain. 
Small Birds—There is nothing about the Thrush, 
nor the ‘ Fulfer,’ a characteristic Norfolk word, but 
Blackbirds often come in. In January 1520 four are 
brought, and then six more “of store,” and after that 
come another six. In the thirty-ninth week of 1522 
John Long and Stephen Percy bring four Blackbirds 
and eight Woodcocks. Judging from other household 
accounts, Blackbirds seem to have been rated a sort 
of delicacy. All this tribe of birds has greatly increased 
in England, and it is conceivable that four hundred 
* Professor Thorold Rogers is of opinion that in 1503 Norfolk was the 
second most opulent county in England, 
} The first mention of the Turkey as a denizen of Norfolk is discoverable 
in 1601, in ‘“‘ The Official Papers of Sir Nathaniel Bacon ”’ (R. Historical Soc., 
p. 220): it soon became as common there as in other parts of England. 
t Supra, p. 57, note. 
