Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/407

Rh from such sources as are still available, what can be gathered from authors about the Bearded Tit in the Norf. and Nor. Nat. Trans, vi. p. 429, and the following further particulars may be added. It only breeds in Norfolk, and the only other counties in which it is still to be found with any sort of regularity are Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

In Suffolk, in March, 1899, a small flock was seen on Fritton Lake and another on Oulton Broad, where, from enquiries on the spot in 1885, I found it was to be met with; and in 1891 Mr. Bunn, the taxidermist, informed me of his having had several from there at different times. Babington gives interesting particulars of their former haunts (Birds of Suff. pp. 64, 251), but they are now extinct on the Blyth and the Alde, but Mr. Tuck was recently informed of some being on the River Lack.

In Lincolnshire the late Mr. Cordeaux never met with a specimen, yet in 1864 A.G. More thought it might breed in that county ('Ibis,' 1865, p. 120), which was one of the five enumerated by W. C. Hewitson. It is certain that when Gould, in 1873, said it bred in all the fenny districts of Lincolnshire, he was entirely wrong. Miller Christy has collected interesting details of its former abundance in Essex, and even thought it possible in 1890 that it might still be reckoned a resident in extremely small numbers, though the last identified seems to have been on the River Stort in July, 1888 ('Birds of Essex,' pp. 91, 92).

In Cambridgeshire, Mr. John Titterton, of Ely, does not know the last date of its breeding, but is able to give the most recent information of migrants, viz. that in 1897 fourteen were seen, and in 1898 a flock of five, and again in December, 1899, a flock of about a dozen, which remained for more than a month in one place. These, however, by the end of January, 1900, had been so upset by the harvesting of the reeds that only three or four remained. In the palmy days of Whittlesea Mere they must have been abundant, but Whittlesea is a thing of the past. A pair obtained there in 1841 are in Newcastle Museum, and it is on record that this locality furnished a white variety.

For Surrey, some additional particulars are given in the 'Birds of Surrey,' by J.A. Bucknill, who remarks that authors have regarded the Bearded Tit as having been a resident at one