NOTES AND QUERIES.
MAMMALIA.
White-beaked Dolphin at Great Yarmouth.—A White-beaked Dolphin (Delphinus albirostris), 54 in. in length, was brought in on July 12th; it was taken in the nets of a herring-lugger the night previous. With the great increase of steam drifters cetaceans appear to have become comparatively scarce.—A. Patterson (Ibis House, Great Yarmouth).
AVES.
Notes from Yarmouth.—Bird-life in this locality during the past dreary summer and autumn has not presented many interesting episodes. My month's holiday on Breydon mud-flats in July and August afforded as blank a record as any I ever remember.
A late Oystercatcher (Hæmatopus ostralegus) flew past me on Breydon on the night of June 20th; and up to June 25th I never saw fewer Redshanks (Totanus calidris), which nevertheless had a good time in the upper marsh-lands, for they were reported numerous on the Beccles river, and in August were around my location on the flats in exceedingly gratifying numbers. I suspected them of feeding on Corophium longicorne, a species abounding in the surface of the ooze, and on small red mudworms beneath it. Lesser Terns were familiar objects in May and June, the smart little fellows fishing all around one, as if man had never an evil thought, and they were attracted still closer by an imitation of their note. Two pairs would, I believe, have nested with us on a flat they took a fancy to; they roosted on somewhat dry spots. There at night, right through May, they fished in its vicinity, and when it was too rough, angled in the semi-brackish ditches for Three-spined Sticklebacks, and even seemed to prefer fishing there when the Herring-Syle appeared in the tidal water. I had more than one happy moment watching them dropping upon their prey as I skulked in the grass at a ditch-end. They seldom missed a "stoop." But their household anticipations were suddenly overthrown by the incoming of rather full spring tides, which washed them and their prospects off the flat together. Nevertheless, some were seen about until June 27th. As early as July 7th several came
