Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/285

Rh fearless, as it allowed the person who shot it to approach as near as he liked.— (Harwich).

—On the 29th December, 1876, an immature specimen of the Little Gull, and on the 8th January, 1877, a mature bird of the same species, was shot in the Harwich harbour. The old bird had lost a portion of the upper mandible, and the wound appeared to have been of long standing, as the lost portion was being reproduced. On the 11th January last a mature Kittiwake was shot on the River Stour; and on the 12th February an immature bird of the same species was seen to alight in a farm-yard at Great Oakley, where it was caught, being too exhausted to fly further, and being literally nothing but feathers and bones.—

—In November last a Little Bittern was caught in the Vale Road, Guernsey, and brought alive to the shop of Mr. Couch, the bird-stuffer. I did not see the bird at the time, but it has since been sent over to me: it is a young bird of the year, and Mr. Couch informs me a male by dissection.— (Bishop's Lydeard).

—I have been reading your interesting book 'Our Summer Migrants,' and have just come across a notice of the Nightingale, at page 34: at the bottom of the page you say, on the authority of Mr. Blyth, "There are none in Brittany." Some fifteen years ago, one May night, there were plenty. In the evening I left Nantes, near St. Malo, in one of those odd little conveyances common to country parts of France. I was with a Scotch cousin who had never heard a Nightingale; well, we jogged along, much cramped, weary and hot, far into the night. On nearing Chateaubriant the little conveyance was stopped at the foot of a steep hill, for all to walk up. There was a forest on each side of the road—it was a dark, still night; both sides of the road, among the trees, seemed to be alive with Nightingales singing their loudest. You may imagine my Scotch cousin's astonishment, he being a keen observer of such things. I was so impressed with the circumstance that I cannot forbear writing to you to contradict Mr. Blyth's statement, as I know the Nightingale's note well; and, at the time we heard it, no other birds in that place could have been singing as they did.— (33, Spencer Road, New Wandsworth).

—At page 271 of the 'Zoologist' is a letter from Mr. A.P. Smith about a Woodcock which struck against the vane of a church at Ipswich, and was impaled on the arrow. As some may hardly have credited so extraordinary a story, I may quote a corroborative account from the 'Manchester Courier' of a similar accident to a Jackdaw:—"During the recent gales the inhabitants of Aspatria were surprised to observe a dark-looking object attached to the end of an arrow-shaped vane on the summit of the lofty tower of their church. On a nearer examination it proved to be the lifeless body of a