134 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



celebrated gullery at Scoulton was with my father as long ago as 

 1860, and I remember we picked up a dead Gull which had 

 eaten two small birds, apparently a Titlark and a Willow- 

 Warbler. I have never met with an instance of their preying 

 on birds since, but when I had to farm unlet land in the vicinity 

 of Scoulton, the bailiff assured me that, if he was threshing corn, 

 the Gulls would sometimes fly round the stack and catch the 

 Mice as they ran out. 



5th.— Sir T. D. Pigott, Mr. H. Upcher, and Mr. Marlborough 

 Pryor found any number of Common Terns' eggs at Blakeney, 

 and a fair lot of Lesser Terns. At Wolferton Mr. Cresswell 

 reports two hundred and eight Common Terns' nests, and one 

 hundred and five Lesser Terns' nests; and at Wells, where 

 they are protected by the Earl of Leicester, I believe they also 

 did well. 



6th. — Lord Leicester's watcher at the Wells "Ternery" 

 pointed out a Eoseate Tern to Mr. C. Gurney, and later in the 

 month the same or another was identified at Blakeney Point, 

 where there were also some Sandwich Terns (B. Pinchen). 



9th. — The Great Crested Grebe. Quite a number of Great 

 Crested Grebes on Hoveton Broad, every bend had its tenants 

 and two young ones, for, in spite of laying four or five eggs, the 

 number seldom exceeds two, and if it were not for their mother's 

 backs being a place of safety, the hungry Pike would not allow 

 even that small quantity to escape. Altogether, I think, Mr. 

 Barclay and I must have seen thirty-five, which shows what 

 protection has done for this species, which Eichard Lubbock, 

 writing in 1845, thought was in danger of becoming extinct in 

 Norfolk. Mr. Aplin thinks that it is the early or late growth of 

 the rushes {Scirpus lacustris) which determines the date of this 

 bird's breeding (' Zoologist,' p. 235). Undoubtedly they like a 

 sufficiency of cover, but I do not remember to have found eggs 

 earlier than May ; yet April nests are to be met with. The 

 Grebe does not use all the nests it makes. When a nest is used 

 its interior — at least, on our Broads — is composed of fibrous 

 portions of the "Gladden" (Scirpus), which flake off easily, 

 leaving a brown substance like cocoa-nut fibre. Here let me 

 correct a mistake in the Norfolk "Beport" for 1906, where, by 

 a slip, the date of some Grebes' eggs on the point of hatching 



