ORNITHOLOGICAL REPORT FOR NORFOLK. 169 



Colonel George Montagu under the name of Cellularia bassance. 

 Mr. William Evans, who has made a study of parasites in birds, 

 is inclined to suppose that Cellularia, when it has reached its 

 adult stage, makes its way through the skin of its host, and 

 might be then found reduced in size, hidden among the Gannet's 

 feathers. This will partly account for the very great difficulty 

 which some have experienced in finding it. If any of your corre- 

 spondents who may happen to skin a Gannet could secure me a 

 specimen of Cellularia I should be extremely obliged, as it is 

 desirable that a better figure of this singular form should be 

 secured than that here reproduced from ' The Memoirs of the 

 Wernerian Natural History Society.' 



28th. — S., 3. An adult male Ortolan Bunting taken in a 

 market garden at Yarmouth (E. C. Saunders). 



29th. — Bittern booming at Hickling, and a pair of Short- 

 eared Owls seen (Bird). 



May. 



6th. — The Norfolk Broads. To the gullery on Hoveton Broad, 

 where there are considered by the owner to be three hundred 

 Black-headed Gulls' nests this year. There are also an excep- 

 tional number of Bedshanks on the marshes, whose strange 

 quiverings and pirouettings have been so well described by Mr. 

 J. S. Huxley (P. Z. S., 1912, p. 51). An egg of this species, 

 which we found, was taken by Mr. G. H. Gurney and placed 

 under a hen ; it hatched out on June 4th, incubation having 

 lasted twenty-four or twenty-five days. By dint of judicious 

 feeding upon ants' eggs and very small worms, this young Bed- 

 shank did well for four days, and would have lived longer if the 

 hen had not killed it. The great size of its legs struck us as 

 being out of all proportion to its little body. Mr. Arthur 

 Patterson considers that Bedshanks were remarkably numerous 

 in the valley of the Waveney, and their abundance this spring 

 has been noticed elsewhere by other observers; in a limited area 

 he estimated a hundred pair, some of which must have bred very 

 early, for Mr. F. Chasen saw young ones which were able to 

 use their wings on April 25th. This increase may be due to 

 protection, or, what is more likely, to the sediment left on the 

 marshes by the great flood of August, 1912, which would probably 

 breed the sort of food Bedshanks eat. Prior to this, Mr. Patterson 



