G8 
only other small birds being male house sparrows, as if they 
also dissolved partnership when on their travels at this 
particular season. In all parts of the county the unusu- 
ally large flocks of redwings and fieldfares excited general 
notice, and these, as the weather increased in severity, seemed to 
draw closer to the towns and villages, clearing off the berries of 
every kind, and exhibiting a tameness during the most severe 
weather, which I scarcely ever remember to have witnessed before. 
The deep snow on the 27th, followed by two or three nights of 
stinging frost, brought them to our doors and windows like robins 
and sparrows, and in front of my house, on the Unthank’s I load, 
within five yards of the footpath, I counted sixteen fieldfares on 
one Pyr acanthus shrub, nailed up between the windows, greedily 
devouring the berries or resting, in company with a few attendant 
redwings, on the window-sills or nearest trees so soon as their 
hunger was appeased for a time. The same thing occurred within 
the walls of the city as well as in the suburbs, and whilst many 
fell victims to boys, cats, and other destructives, the survivors left 
only when no further food was to bo had. Why, in their starved 
condition, they did not pass on southwards before, I cannot quite 
understand. One thing was particularly observable : the usually 
wary fieldfares were more starved than the redwings, and exhibited 
less fear of the passers by. Two fieldfares that I caught and turned 
into my aviary, died in a wretched state of emaciation, though well 
supplied with cranberries, whilst a redwing taken at the same time 
was plump, and still survives. Kedwings sitting in rows on the 
housetops is not a usual sight in Norfolk, and from Yarmouth I 
learn that an immense flight of redwings was observed just before 
the very severe weather set in. They came in droves and might 
have been mistaken for larks from their numbers, and even then 
many were found dead ; the result, possibly, of privation expe- 
rienced further north. I cannot ascertain that the enormous 
migration of skylarks said to have been observed on the Lin- 
colnshire coast on the lltli, and in Sussex on the 17th, was 
remarked in Norfolk, and the Norwich market had but a sprinkling 
ot these birds amongst the number of blackbirds, thrushes, field- 
fares, etc., hanging in bunches for sale ; but on the 30th, Mr. 
Lurney informs me, two large flocks of skylarks were observed 
feeding in some fields at Northrepps, roughly computed at over 
