Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/146

122 miles east of Marseilles, and six hundred as the crow flies from Norfolk. There is nothing very suggestive in the comparison, but it shows how long it generally takes migratory birds to travel on from France to our shores, though it is not likely that they always fly in a straight line, for the fluctuations of the wind may at any time make them deviate many points east or west.

During September and October the wind in Norfolk was generally west, or some point of west, and it will be seen that it was so on the four dates on which Bluethroats appeared; but the Little Gulls seen on Oct. 21st by Mr. Southwell were driven to the shore by a high north wind. In Lincolnshire, as in Norfolk, Mr. Caton Haigh writes that the wind was persistently west and north-west, adding that up to the end of September it had been about the worst season he could recollect for migrants. With us the Rooks and Little Gulls seen by Mr. Southwell constituted the only autumnal movements out of the common, but Mr. Lowne observed an unusual number of Long-eared Owls in his district, though the season was very uneventful indeed, compared with many which I remember.

An Iceland Falcon is stated, in 'The Naturalist,' to have been shot in Lincolnshire during December; but there were remarkably few raptorial visitants to the east coast, the autumn being marked by an absence of Buzzards, though it is true I heard of two Hen-Harriers; and I one day saw six Kestrels near the sea (wind W.). A Honey-Buzzard—the only one notified—occurred near Thetford in November (E.T. Daubeny), but this is a species which in some seasons is no rarity.

The principal rarity to be mentioned is a Little Bustard in good winter plumage, which appeared in November. I must here allude to the fifteen Great Bustards turned out in the Brandon district last August (not allowed full liberty) by the enterprise of Lord Walsingham, in the hope that Norfolk and Suffolk may once again be stocked with these magnificent game-birds; an aspiration which everyone will share, though it remains to be seen what success will attend the attempt. In 'The Eastern Counties Magazine' for November, Lord Walsingham gives an account of the experiment so far as it had proceeded at the time of writing, and the birds are still quite safe, and in an enclosure of about eight hundred acres. Needless to say, the Norwich