Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/325

Rh colour they will grow up. I am told that one of the eggs was abnormally long,—in fact, more than twice as long as any of the others. I have often seen abnormal varieties in size and shape of eggs, but never before connected this with variation in the colour of birds.— (Northrepps, Norwich).

—Towards the end of April a nest of the Hedgesparrow was found by a friend in a very curious position. It was built in a large head of cabbage growing in a kitchen garden near Coolock, in the County Dublin. Since then five eggs have been laid, but, when they were partly hatched, the nest was deserted by the parent birds. It is composed of dry pea-stalks, moss, and part of a dry cabbage-leaf, and is lined with hair.— (Rathmines School Field Club, Dublin).

—On looking over some of my small birds recently, I found a specimen of the Tawny Pipit, Anthus campestris, the capture of which I do not think has been recorded. It was taken near Brighton on the 12th October, 1875, and is a young bird, as evidenced by the light edgings to the feathers.— (Fairfield Avenue, Staines).

—On the 28th April the Blackcap arrived in this neighbourhood, and a day or two subsequently about a dozen might be counted in our woods. My friend, Mr. A.G. More, having some time since directed my attention to the rarity of this bird in Ireland, I brought a specimen to the Royal Dublin Society. About the middle of May they apparently vanished, but a few soon reappeared, and one is certain to detect or hear one or two when walking through a straggling or leafy wood close at hand. That the Blackcap breeds with us I have little doubt, for my sister saw the old birds feeding the young a day or two ago, and pointed the former out to me afterwards. In my opinion it is a regular summer visitant here, arriving at the end of April or beginning of May, for I have both heard and seen it frequently during previous years about that time as well as later on, though by reason of my ignorance as to the position it occupies in the avi-fauna of Ireland, annual records of its occurrence have not been entered. Thompson mentions it from the Vale of Avoca in this county.— (Fassaroe, Bray, County Wicklow).

—On the 4th of May my brother and I put up a Jack Snipe on the Leiston reed-land. This is the latest stay in spring I have known this bird to make. In the year 1873 I flushed one on the 16th of April.— (Blaxhall, Suffolk).

—A little more than a month since a pair of Sparrows selected the frame of a sun-blind at the back of my house as a nesting-place; the front part which is attached to the blind projected a little at one end (being slightly warped); this left an