126 
therefore, in which the winter overlapped the spring and an autumnal 
summer w^as succeeded by a more summer-like autumn, it is 
scarcely to be wondered at that our resident and migratory birds, 
alike, should have suffered from weather of so abnormal a character, 
or, that tire sportsman and naturalist should have had as poor a 
time of it as the agriculturist and the gardener. 
The severe frosts in January only exceeded those of the pre- 
ceding month in duration, and the addition occasionally of a 
keen searching wind, reduced most of our resident birds, 
Thrushes, Starlings, Blackbirds, etc., to a wretched state of tame- 
ness, through privation. But though more deaths, I believe, 
occurred from such causes after than before Christmas, the remarks 
}uade in my supplementary notes for 1878 as to the effect 
of the cold and scarcity of food upon the birds generally are as 
applicable to the commencement of 1879 as to the close of the 
previous year. The shore-gunners had but a small chance of 
rarities, as the “hard-weather” fowl had passed south with the 
earlier frosts, and "with the Broads and rivers frozen over for weeks 
together, and even portions of the navigable rivers “ laid” across, 
the marsh-gunners had even less sport. Snipe, Coots, and Water- 
hens had dispersed long before ; even the Black-headed Buntings 
had left the reed-beds for the fields and stackyards ; and the Bearded 
Tits probably left us for a time, as I neither heard of nor saw any. 
Bird life in such localities, in fact, rvas represented by the Hooded 
Crow, everywhere searching for “ cripples;” arrd by immense flocks 
of wild Ducks,* which frequented the frozen rvaters and reed-beds 
by day, quite iiraccessible to the sportsman till the evening 
“flight,” though the very few decoys still existing were worked 
successfully. Wild Geese w^ere seen in considerable numbers on the 
coast, and in the open parts of the county, during the prolonged 
frosts in January. On the 17th a “skein” of forty-two (species 
unkirown) were observed at Horthrepps. Brents were pleirtiful at 
Yarmouth and Lynn, and in the Cley and Holkham marshes, and 
the lands adjoining. Pink-footed Geese were said to be “as 
* An old marshruan at Surlingliam told me he had never seen such large 
“ lumps” of fowl, as on one or two evenings, during the January frosts, left 
the Broad for their feeding-grounds on the Brundall and Strnmpshaw side 
of the Yare. 
