Note 18 — NOTES[H] ON CERTAIN BIRDS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

Barnacle and Brent Geese as we know them, the first by no means common here; the Wild Goose, probably Anser cinereus; the Scotch Goose (see Note 9), probably the Gannet; and the Bergander, an old name for the Sheld-drake, as used by Turner in 1544, and derived from the Dutch Berg-eende, German Bergente ("Dict. Birds," p. 835). Browne's statement that this bird formerly bred about Northwold, or as it is even now occasionally called by the natives, "Norrold," some twenty miles from the sea; or, as he says, in the fourth letter to Merrett, "abounding in vast and spatious commons," is very interesting, although not a solitary instance, for I am informed that this bird breeds in the present day on the Gull Lake, Twig Moor, in Lincolnshire; but that it should have chosen such a nesting site is not more surprising than the fact of the Ring Plover, quite as strictly a marine species, frequenting the extensive sandy warrens about Thetford and Brandon, near the south-west border of the county, for the same purpose, as they still continue to do. But for Browne's mention of the circumstance we should not have been aware of this singular departure from the normal nesting habits of the Sheld-duck, as no tradition I believe exists on the subject, and at present it only nests in the sand-hills in some parts of the coast of N.W. Norfolk.