A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK grine falcon, cormorant, spoonbill, great bustard, avocet and black-headed gull, to which perhaps may be added the Sandwich tern and the roseate tern, and there can be little doubt that in days now long gone by many other species resorted to the woods, fens and marshes of Suffolk in the nesting season. No record seems to exist of Savi's warbler, the marsh-harrier, hen-harrier, honey-buzzard, kite, bittern, grey-lag goose, crane, ruff, black-tailed godwit, curlew and black tern having bred in the county, but from what we know of their habits in other parts of England in former times, and on the continent of Europe at the present day, it seems quite reasonable to believe that such was the case. The birds seen or obtained on Breydon Water, which for some three miles forms the boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk, may fairly be considered to belong in an equal degree to both counties, and several species have no other claim to a place in the Suffolk list than their occur- rence ' on Breydon.' In the following list, when a species is described as a 'resident' it is intended to convey the meaning that some individuals of that species may be found in the county all the year round, but not in all cases the same in winter as in summer. Two very well known birds, the song- thrush and the chaffinch, may be taken as typical examples. Very few thrushes pass the winter in Suffolk, even though that season may be an exceptionally mild one, and for every one that does so we have at least a dozen pairs of breeding birds. On the contrary swarms of migratory chaffinches come to us with the bramblings in late autumn and early winter, and for every pair which breed here we have twenty or more
- foreigners ' in winter. The blackbirds which come to our holly trees
in December with the fieldfares and redwings are probably not the same birds which throng our fruit gardens in June ; the ' plovers' eggs ' so eagerly sought by schoolboys in the Easter holidays are not laid by the same lapwings which may be seen flocking in our fields in November ; and the snipe whose ' drumming ' above our marshes and meadows is one of the most welcome signs of the coming of spring will be far away when the snipe-shooter goes over the same ground later in the year. It would seem in fact that most birds which breed with us leave us in the late summer or autumn and move on to the south ; their places are filled, and in the case of the sky-lark and wood-pigeon filled ten times over, by others of the same species which come to us from the north. The migration of ' resident ' species can be seen by any one who passes a few days at Southwold or Aldeburgh about the middle of October, when sky-larks, starlings, rooks and jackdaws can be watched as they come in over the sea. By a ' summer migrant ' is meant a bird which comes to us in spring, remains with us some months, rearing one or perhaps two broods here, and leaving again in autumn never spends the winter in this country. Of this class we have about thirty species, of which the red- backed shrike, swift, wryneck, turtle-dove, stone-curlew, common tern and lesser tern may be mentioned as examples. 178
