EMIGRATION OF ROOK AND GREY CROW. 391 
On February 21st only four Grey Crows were detected, but 
on the 22nd one hundred and twenty passed Heligoland, and on 
the 23rd about three hundred. On March 18th only six Grey 
Crows and some dozens of Rooks, on the 19th one Crow, and on 
the 20th none at all. The correspondence in migration during 
the spring of 1912 was therefore not great.* 
In his recently published and most useful ‘ Studies in Bird 
Migration,’ Mr. W. E. Clarke has some excellent remarks on the 
Corvide (especially in chap. xvi.), with valuable comments on 
the movements of the Grey Crow and the Rook in spring. Mr. 
Clarke has cited three instances in chap. xv. of Rooks and 
Starlings arriving on the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts in spring 
(cf. vol. i. p. 263, note), which is contrary to what one looks for 
at that time of the year, when they are generally going the 
other way. 
One of the cases which Mr. Clarke quotes is a note of mine 
in ‘ The Zoologist’ (1902, p. 87), referring to eight dead Rooks 
and some Starlings which were found by Mr. A. Patterson on 
the shore near Yarmouth on March 28rd, 1901. But this com- 
munication, being badly expressed, has evidently been misread. 
The meaning intended, which is not very clear, I must admit, 
was not that these birds had been drowned on their migration 
to England, but during their usual vernal passage from our coast 
to the Continent, and their bodies afterwards washed back by a 
gale from the east. It appears that a similar disaster nearly 
happened off Yarmouth to the Rooks in 1904 when on their 
customary spring voyage from this country. 
On February 22nd of that year Mr. A. Patterson, of Yar- 
mouth, saw hundreds of what he terms ‘‘ wind-muddled Rooks,”’ 
trooping in from the North Sea, which had evidently found 
the north-west wind, then blowing half a gale, too strong for a 
continuance of their journey (cf. ‘ Nature in Hastern Norfolk,’ 
p. 148). In this case it seems that most of them put back to 
land in time to save their lives, but for aught Mr. Patterson 
knew many may have been drowned. 
Mr. Clarke is of opinion that considerable numbers of Rooks 
* On this subject a table of comparisons, extending over many years’ 
which included many species, was published in the Norfolk Naturalists’ 
‘ Transactions’ (vol. iv. p. 52). 
