Naturalists' Society has done all in its power to second so laudable an effort, and will continue to do so, while on its recommendation the Poaching Prevention Society has also interested itself in the matter.
I am indebted as usual to various correspondents for most of my information, and have only examined those birds against whose names a dagger is placed. Notes on varieties are placed together at the end, there being no importance in the dates at which they may happen to be seen, nor much interest in pied birds of any kind; but melanisms and erythryisms by their rarity are always worth recording.
January.
7th.—Wet. Eagle-Owls making their usual nest-hole.
8th.—My son brought back from Cley a Pink-footed Goose,† and saw some Guillemots.
9th.—I am indebted to Mr. W.A. Dutt and Mr. Darkins, the decoyman, for particulars of the successful winter take at Fritton decoy—the best for many years; but these figures have been already communicated by Mr. Southwell (Zool. 1900, p. 239), and need not be repeated. I also learn from him that flocks of Goosanders and Smews frequented Holkham lake, and that a Shoveler was sent to Norwich. Among the fowl taken at the decoy, Mr. Dutt reports a Long-tailed Duck, a very unusual capture. At Holkham lake there has never been a decoy.
10th.—Several Bitterns were reported at the end of December, and also in the beginning of January, which is the Bittern's month par excellence, when they are doubtless frozen out of more northern countries. The movement was very extended, reaching to Devonshire and other parts of England, and also to Ireland. Mr. T.E. Gunn, the taxidermist, received six for preservation, of which five were males, a proportion in the sexes which has been noticed before by Mr. Lowne, who in fourteen years had obtained only one female.
February.
27th.—I learn from my correspondent, the Rev. M.C. Bird, to whom I am as usual much indebted, that during one of the annual Coot "battues" a Bittern was heard "booming" on Rushhills; this early utterance of a once familiar sound, which
