68 
saw in the flesh was shot on Gunton Beach, near Lowestoft, hy 
Mr. Fowler’s gamekeeper, on the 18th, when others were seen, 
possibly passing further south after the storm had abated. 
Altogether, as far as one can judge from fairly reliable “ here- 
say ” evidence, over sixty specimens were killed in this county ; 
forty- two I can vouch for, having handled most of them myself ; 
and judging from the various records in the Field and Zoologist, 
Bridlington Bay, on the Yorkshire coast, appears to have been the 
only other locality in which these gulls appeared in any numbers,* 
and there also the same wholesale slaughter awaited them as on 
our own inhospitable coast. Mr. Cordeaux, {Zoologist, p. 2081,) 
on the authority of Mr. Richardson, of Beverley, states that 
twenty-nine little gulls, nineteen adult and ten immature birds, 
were shot near Bridlington early in February, and these, from 
Mr. Boynton’s statement in the Field of February the 26th, seem 
to have appeared simultaneously with the large numbers that 
visited FTorfoUc, and were driven in by the same severe easterly 
gales. 
The few specimens of this gull which in previous years have 
been procured in Norfolk, have appeared both in autumn and 
winter, from August to the end of January, but extraordinary as 
was the influx on this occasion, it was attributable, I think, far 
more to accidental circumstances than to any unusual abundance of 
the species during the previous nesting season. With gulls, as 
with most wild fowl, the young birds are more accessible, and as a 
rule, are procurable earlier in the season than the old ones, which 
are “ driven in ” only by stormy or frosty weather. Thus the 
three immature birds shot in December and January, represented 
the ordinary stragglers from the main body of migrants, which, 
probably in most seasons, desport themselves off our northern 
coasts, and regulating their movements by the mildness or severity 
of the weather, pass on, almost unnoticed, to more southern 
quarters. The eggs of this species have been lately received by 
• The few notes of the occurrence of stragglers in other parts of England 
are only such as are ordinarily met with during the autumn and winter 
months. An unusual number of the.se gulls were shot at Bridlington, Filey, 
and Flamborough, on the Yorkshire coast, in October, 1868, as recorded by 
Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., in the “ Zoologist ” for that year, but at that time I 
believe only one specimen was procured in Norfolk. 
