Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/130

102 for him on the following day, but he was gone. This is the latest date at which I ever myself saw any of the swallow tribe. I take it, they come down to this ancient cinque-port, and, like so many other travellers, make a very short sojourn previously to their departure for foreign climes; for I recollect, in the year 1831, observing two swifts at Dover, a little before dusk on the evening of September the 10th. They were not to be seen the next day, nor had I seen any previously Since the 14th of August, as recorded in the ' Magazine of Natural History.'—W.T. Bree; Allesley Rectory, near Coventry, Feb. 8, 1843.

Note on the late departure of the Swallow in 1841. As I was walking along the Beverley road on the 12th of November, 1841, at noon, the sun shining unusually warm at the time, I was surprised to hear overhead the well-known but pleasing twitter of the common swallow (Hirundo rustica); and looking towards the direction from which the sounds came, I observed two of the above-named birds flying about, and apparently enjoying themselves as if it were summer; being most probably allured from their hybernating places by the warmth of the weather, and the abundance of small flies which were hovering about. In the morning there had been a keen frost, and the weather for the next week was unusually severe for the season, the ground being covered with snow to the depth of four or five inches. The usual time for the reappearance of the swallow in this neighbourhood is generally about the 16th of April, sooner or later, according to the state of the weather.—Geo. Norman; Hull, February 9, 1843.

Note on Water-birds occurring at Kingsbury reservoir. I have sent a rough list of water-birds, including the waders, obtained or seen near Kingsbury reservoir, a large sheet of water about five miles north of London, on the Edgeware road, which has been made about eight years. Specimens of those marked thus * are in my collection; and I have not put one in the list that I am not sure of its having occurred.