Anas Arctica clusii wch though hee placeth about the faro Islands is the same wee call a puffin co[=m]on about Anglisea in wales & sometimes [for _struck out_] taken upon our seas not sufficiently described by the name of puffinus the bill being so remarkably differing from other ducks & not horizontally butt meridionally formed to feed in the clefts of the rocks of insecks, shell-fish & others.
The great number of riuers riuulets & plashes of water makes hernes [to abound in these _struck out_] & herneries to abound in these parts. yong hensies being esteemed a festiuall dish & much desired by some palates.
The Ardea stellaris botaurus, or bitour[26] is also co[=m]on & esteemed the better dish. in the belly of one I found a frog in an hard frost at christmas. another I kept in a garden 2 yeares feeding it with fish mice & frogges. in defect whereof making a scrape for sparrowes & small birds, the bitour made shifft to maintaine herself upon them.
[26] 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 The spring cry of the Bittern is mentioned by Robert Marsham in his unpublished journal nineteen times, between the years 1739 and 1775, as first heard at Stratton Strawless, generally between the 15th of March and the 15th of April; and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.