Note 26 — NOTES[H] ON CERTAIN BIRDS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

This is one of the birds once common enough in Norfolk, which in the present day is only a winter and spring migrant. The last eggs of the Bittern were taken in this county on 30th of March, 1868; the last "boom" of a resident was heard in May, 1886, in the August of which year a young female was killed at Reedham with down still adhering to its feathers; this was probably the last Norfolk-bred Bittern. In the "Vulgar Errors," book 3, chapter xxvii., section 4, is a discourse on the "mugient noise" of the Bittern and the mode of its production, and in a foot-note in the same place is a curious anecdote illustrating the difficulty of detecting a wounded Bittern, even when marked down in short, recently mown grass and flags. The spring cry of the Bittern is mentioned by Robert Marsham in his unpublished journal nineteen times, between the years 1739 and 1775, as first heard at Stratton Strawless, generally between the 15th of March and the 15th of April; and it was on the 14th of the latter month that Benjamin Stillingfleet records it in the "Calendar of Flora" as heard in the same locality in 1755. He does not describe the note, but uses the words "makes a noise." Marsham, however, on one occasion, in 1750, a very early year, records it on the 20th of February. As a once familiar sound, but one which will probably never again be heard here under purely normal conditions, these dates seem worthy of recording.