OENITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM NORFOLK. 99 



Giglioli, of Florence, writes that P. alleni has been taken both 

 in Italy and Sicily in December ; see also Giglioli, ' Avifauna 

 Italica,' pp. 353, 354. It is also true, as Prof. Newton remarks, 

 that few species escape from a cage more readily than those of 

 this genus, because they look bulky, while in reality they can 

 squeeze through a very small opening. Enquiries ascertained 

 that it was not a fugitive from Woburn Park, where a number of 

 P. smaragdonotus were turned out in 1896 and 1897. All Crakes 

 and Gallinules are wanderers, because they fly high and are 

 probably easily carried away by storms, and it is easier to ex- 

 plain the appearance of Porzana maruetta in Berkshire and the 

 Hebrides, of Porphyriola martinica in Ireland, of Aramides 

 cayennensis in Wiltshire, and of P. alleni at Yarmouth by the 

 theory of their being storm-driven migrants assisted by ships, 

 than by the alternative theory of escape. There are scores of 

 authentic records of Water-Rails, Corn-Crakes, Gallinules, and 

 Porphyrios being caught on ships. On the same day a large 

 Divert, thought at first to be Adam's Diver, was picked up on 

 the shore at Caister, and taken to Mr. E. C. Saunders ; but 

 although nearly the whole of the lower mandible and about two- 

 thirds of the upper were white, the bill was not sufficiently 

 upturned for that species, judging from Prof. Collett's plate and 

 article and from my father's Pakefield specimen. Neither can I 

 at all think that the specimen figured in Babington's ' Birds of 

 Suffolk ' is really Colymbus adamsi, though he thought it was. 

 Our museum contains a good example from the north of 

 Norway, obtained at Tromsoe by Col. Feilden, which shows 

 clearly the difference in the bill. 



AVI CULTURAL NOTES. 



Eagle Owl. — On February 1st one of my late father's Eagle 

 Owls died ; it was believed to be between thirty and forty years 

 of age, and a few weeks after its companion, thirty years old, 

 also died. My father had many of these fine Owls, but he 

 never equalled the success of Mr. Meade Waldo, who has two in 

 Kent, one of which — the male bird — is undoubtedly seventy-one, 

 and the other — the female — is believed to be fifty-six, and is the 

 parent of ninety young ones. Compared to such Nestors our 

 birds were juvenile. There is no easier bird to keep than this 



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