93 ) 



SOME ORNITHOLOGICAL WAR-NOTES FROM GREAT 



YARMOUTH. 



By A. H. Patterson. 



Surely others of your contributors besides myself have 

 noticed unusual doings or movements among our wild birds as 

 a result of the unrestfulness attending the noise and turmoil 

 of the great war ? The recent nocturnal visit of Zeppelins, I 

 understand, sadly upset the Norfolk Pheasants, which crowed 

 loudly their fright and annoyance at the unusual disturbance. 

 Taken generally, I am inclined to think the remarkable scarcity 

 of our usual winter visitors has been greatly due to the war — I 

 speak now for my own neighbourhood — and I am somewhat of an 

 opinion that the migrant hosts, in general, proceeded further 

 southward. I certainly discovered fewer small birds washed up 

 at the tide-mark during the period of the autumnal migration, a 

 fact, perhaps, due to the removal of light-vessels and the 

 suppression of coast lights, in comparison with what I have 

 noted in other years. We also had fewer thick nights than 

 normally, with much rain, and a remarkable insistence of winds 

 from the south and westward. Then, too, we had very little ice 

 and snow before Christmas ; and, again, the old Breydoners' 

 axiom that " No snow here afore Chris'mas — little fowl arter- 

 wards," would seem to have contained some truth in it. 



As I remarked in the ' Zoologist ' (1914, p. 392) early in the 

 war, I noticed some inrushes of Starlings, probably birds ousted 

 from the Flanders marshes; and the erratic incoming of scattered 

 flocks of Gulls from the North Sea, their wild, tumbling, scared 

 movements synchronising with reported encounters at sea. Huge 

 flocks of various Gulls, on some occasions probably mustering 

 10,000 birds, were to be seen on Breydon in August during the 

 early days of the war ; there they must have played unpre- 

 cedented havoc among the Shore Crabs (Carcinus mcenas) 

 as the days went by; and scarce enough became the carrion 



