MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
J25 
be hoped that the interest evinced by the King in their 
protection, added to the gracious letter to the Royal Society 
for the Protection of Birds from the Queen, whose kindness 
and humanity to all living creatures is so well known, may 
at length have the effect of emphasising the disgust long felt 
by all right-minded people at the horrid displays of mutilated 
birds, which are supposed to add to the attractiveness of 
feminine adornment. — T. S. 
Wild Geese Killed by Lightning. — About 9 a.m. on 
the morning of the 8th of February, my attention was drawn 
to a sharp drop in the barometer, which continued to fall 
until 2 p.m., when a violent storm of quite twenty minutes 
duration, accompanied by snow and much lightning, blew up 
from the north-west. Such a combination is unusual, and 
it greatly affected the large flocks of Pink-footed Geese, 
which to the number of 3000 annually make Holkham and 
Wells their winter quarters ; alarmed by. the thunder and 
blinded by the snow, they flew about, exposing themselves 
and suffering in consequence from the lightning. 
No less than nineteen Wild Geese were killed whilst on 
the wing by the lightning, as 1 am informed by Mr. H. M. 
Upcher, who was near the scene at the time. I learn from 
him that these were picked up in four adjacent parishes, 
viz. : in Weybourne, Kelling, Bayfield, and Holt ; in the 
latter, five fell on the school football ground, as mentioned 
in ‘ The Field ’ of February 24th, by Mr. J. G. Woods. 
The dead birds consisted of 15 Pink-footed Geese, and 
4 White-fronted Geese. Most of them were lying on their 
backs when found, and showed an abrasion on the upper 
side between the wings, amounting in one case to a ragged 
hole, three inches long. One or two are said to have been 
uninjured, but possibly a close examination beneath the 
feathers would have revealed the mark of the electric current 
somewhere. 
Various trees and cottages were struck by the lightning, 
but the only other feathered victim was a Greater Black- 
backed Gull, which fell in a field of Mr. Russell Colman’s at 
