ORNITHOLOGICAL REPORT FOR NORFOLK. 131 



20th. — S.S.E., 1. Considerable quantities of Pied Flycatchers 

 reported to be on the coast by Mr. Borrer and Mr. Knights (date 

 unnoted). 



22nd. — W*, 1. Very thick and misty all day by the sea, while 

 near Norwich there was a very heavy fall of rain, amounting 

 at Keswick to 1*75 in. in a few hours. This state of things, I 

 am informed by Mr. Barclay, drove the Bearded Tits from their 

 recesses in the reeds, so that in going round Hoveton Broad he 

 saw thirty or more sitting on the reed-tops, a number which the 

 broadman had never seen exceeded in that particular locality. 



23rd. — S., 1, fine. This was a day of migration, or rather a 

 reaping of the fruits of yesterday's would-be migration, which 

 was an abortive one, being retarded by a thick mist which for 

 nearly twenty-four hours enveloped the coast of Norfolk. It 

 might be safely predicted that such a state of the atmosphere 

 would cause a congestion in the stream of migratory birds con- 

 verging on Blakeney, some of which may have started from 

 inland places on the Continent when it was quite fine ; accord- 

 ingly observers had their chance. I wish I had had the luck to 

 have been on the shore, but a good observer was there in Mr. F. J. 

 Richards, who has given some account of what transpired on 

 this and the two following days. About 10 a.m. the first signal 

 of a movement was the presence of an immature Red-breasted 

 Flycatcher and a Ring-Ouzel, but the chief migration set in during 

 the afternoon, when a variety of foreign migrants deployed on a 

 line of coast of a little more than a mile. One feature of the 

 inrush was the suddenness with which these various species 

 demonstrated their presence in the salt-wort bushes, which Mr. 

 Richards and his son and Ram knew to have been empty a short 

 time before. Apart from great numbers of Redstarts, the new- 

 comers consisted of Pied Flycatchers, Blackcaps, Garden- 

 Warblers, Yellow-browed Warblers (2), Willow-Warblers (?), Ring- 

 Ouzels, Bluethroat (1), Blue-headed Wagtail, and other com- 

 moner birds. Mr. Ram told me that some of these little birds 

 seemed to drop down into the salt-wort bushes from the sky, but 

 one or two at a time, and so small are they that no one sees them 

 until they are already in the shelter of the bushes. It is just, 

 he says, as if they had sprung out of the earth by magic, but 

 there they are, and delighted to be on land again. 



