Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/284

258 their clear, sonorous notes may be heard almost in every grove. I saw a Pied Wagtail for the first time on March 10th; a few hen Chaffinches on the 18th; and a friend told me he observed a female Wheatear on April 1st. I believe the females generally make their appearance a few days before the males.— (Wilsden).

[Our correspondent's observation with regard to the Willow Wren confirms a remark which we have before had occasion to make, namely, that the song of a summer bird, when heard for the first time, does not always indicate that the author of it has only just arrived; on the contrary, for the reason above stated and from other causes, the bird may have been here many days before announcing its presence by a song.—.]

—I came across a very unusual site for a Blackcap's nest last summer, well illustrating the old proverb that "Necessity is the mother of invention." This bird, as every one knows, usually builds amongst brambles, grown through with nettles, &c., but in this instance a marked deviation from the usual mode had been resorted to. In a fir plantation, consisting chiefly of spruce without any underwood (indeed nothing will grow beneath spruce), a Blackcap had suspended its nest in the hollow formed by the downward growth of the spring shoots of a spruce branch stretching out from the tree and a few feet from the ground, exactly in the manner of the Goldcrest.— (Beverley).

—A female Black-throated Diver was shot during the third week of April on a fresh-water pond at Trengwainton, which as the crow flies is about a mile from the sea. The Divers are oceanic in their habits; and at this season of the year, when mackerel and other fish are abundant, it is curious that the bird in question should have strayed inland to the pond referred to. We never see the Blackthroated Diver in its full speckled plumage with black throat, but we get the other two species occasionally in full ornate plumage. The Black-throated Diver is much the rarest of the three.— (Penzance).

[Our correspondent's remarks are no doubt accurate enough as regards Cornwall, but will not apply to Scotland, where both the Black-throated and Red-throated Divers are eminently fresh-water species. There is, perhaps, scarcely a loch of any size in the north and west of Scotland that is not tenanted, for a considerable portion of the year, by one or more pairs of Divers.—]

.—A beautiful dark-coloured specimen of the Rough-legged Buzzard was shot here in November last; and in December two female Peregrine Falcons were shot on the River Stour—one in the act of stooping at some Sea Gulls; the other, after it had pounced on a Wood Pigeon flying across the river, which it carried to the shore and there killed by tearing out the windpipe and breaking the neck at the back of the head; it was extremely