BIRDS If the list of the birds of Suffolk falls short of the Norfolk list by about thirty species, it is not because the former county has been less attractive to birds than its northern neighbour, but because Suffolk has not been so productive of resident naturalists who have made a special study of local birds. The fifty miles of Suffolk coast-line with its tidal rivers, as well as the marshes and broads of the east and the fens of the north-west, must have been literally teeming with bird-life in the eighteenth century. Latham seems to have had some knowledge of the birds of Suffolk, but it was not till 1824 that the Rev. Revett Sheppard (a Suffolk man) and the Rev. William Whitear jointly produced their Catalogue of Norfolk and Suffolk Birds, with Remarks. In 1846, when the Rev. Alfred Suckling published The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk, he was assisted by Mr. T. M. Spalding, who furnished him with a List of Birds rarely and occasionally met with in the County of Suffolk (vol. i. Introduction pp. xxxv.— ix.). This list contains 116 species, some of which are ordinary summer migrants, such as the wheatear and wryneck, both of which are accorded a place. In 1859 the late Mr, Nicholas Fenwick Hele, a Devonshire man, went into practice as a medical man at Aldeburgh, where he remained till his much-lamented death in 1892. The two editions of his Notes and Jottings about Alde- burgh, published respectively in 1870 and 1890, contain much interesting information on the birds of the district, and his fine collection of local birds, many of them shot, and nearly all mounted by himself, is now preserved in the Ipswich Museum. In 1886 the late Dr. Churchill Babington, rector of Cockfield, published The Catalogue of the Birds of Suffolk, with an Introduction and Remarks on their Distribution, an octavo volume of nearly 300 pages, illustrated by photographs taken from mounted specimens of some of the rarest species; and in 1891 the present writer furnished a list of Suffolk birds for Mr. William White's History, Gazetteer and Directory of Suffolk. At the present time about ninety species of birds habitually breed in the county, and some few others may breed or attempt to do so from time to time, though they can hardly be considered to do so regularly. These are the Dartford warbler, white wagtail, crossbill, short-eared owl, Montagu's harrier, hobby, garganey, pochard, quail, spotted crake, oyster- catcher and woodcock ; and then follows a rather melancholy list of birds which are known to have formerly bred in the county, some of them in large numbers, but which do so no longer, and with the possible exception of the bearded tit there is little hope of their ever doing so again. This catalogue includes the bearded tit, raven, buzzard, pere- I 177 23
