136 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
the week before (Sept. 30th). Coming as it did at the height of 
the migratory season, and from the north-east, it was to be 
expected that it would have an immediate effect upon birds, with 
the movements of which wind is an all-important factor, as 
Norfolk naturalists know well. Accordingly, the following day 
the head-woodman at Hempstead, near Holt, informed me that 
he had seen a bird answering to the description of a Nutcracker. 
This it proved to be. The unfortunate birdt lived to get as far 
as Cawston, where there is a large fir-wood, where one, pre- 
sumably the same individual, was shot that afternoon. On the 
same day, and only about two miles from where the Nutcracker 
was first seen, a Hoopoe turned up. 
9th. N.N.E., 4. Another Nutcrackert shot at Sparham, 
within five miles of where the other was shot, and it is not 
unlikely that they came over together on the night of the 5th, 
with a third which was shot in Buckinghamshire, as recorded. 
From what I have seen of them in Switzerland, I should judge 
the Nutcracker to be a bird of feeble flight, not well adapted for 
crossing seas, and without a wind behind them these would 
hardly have got over the North Sea. On looking back through 
‘The Zoologist,’ I do not find that a Nutcracker has been ac- 
corded a place in these Norfolk Notes since 1907, and the last 
before that was a doubtful occurrence in May, 1899. 
12th.—About three hundred Rooks seen at daybreak by Mr. 
F. N. Chasen arriving at Yarmouth, cawing loudly as they 
dropped on the sand-dunes. Many Rooks were to be seen 
during this month busy on the recently drilled wheat-fields, in 
spite of all efforts to keep them off. It is to be presumed that 
they are not long in finding out which farmers have, and which 
have not, dressed their grain with ‘‘ corvusine.’’ Rooks no doubt 
do a certain amount of good, that no one will deny, but Mr. 
Walter Collinge, in his recent Report to the Council of the Land 
Agents’ Society (1910), lays a verdict of heavy damages against 
them. In eight hundred and thirty dissections made by himself 
and Mr. T. Thring, the percentage of grain was 67°5, and if to 
this be added roots and fruit, it was 71 per cent. In Henry 
VIII.’s time Rooks were kept in check by Act of Parliament. 
13th.—A flock of eleven Norfolk Ploverst in a field of swede- 
turnips at Hempstead, where the gamekeeper had noticed them 
