Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/36

10 of the autumn and winter shootings. Mr. Lewis, the Principal of ihe Spurn Lighthouse, says he has never known them strike the glass like other birds, but during the period of migration they will fly round and round the lantern, apparently not incommoded by the blaze of light, and take off small birds that are fluttering and beating themselves to death against the glass. They arrived off Flamborough in flocks of from ten to twenty. The Principal has never known them strike the glass, but has twice observed them perched on the gallery rail on the outside of the lantern. North of Flamborough they appear to have been equally numerous along the coast. On a rock close to the Hartlepool Lighthouse a fisherman early one morning in October saw eleven or more sitting together. In a letter lately received from Heligoland, Mr. Gätke says:—"The Shorteared Owls pick off the poor birds when they are dazzled by the glare of the lighthouse, but not those fluttering against the glass; but Thrushes on the wing—constantly one hears their dying cries when clutched by the nude talons of an Owl that had just flitted, like a phantom, noiselessly past the light." A friend writing from the Durham coast (November 23rd) says, "During the last bad weather our shores were thickly visited by the Woodcock or Shorteared Owl; there have not been so many for some years."

Great Gray Shrike.—Mr. Boyes informs me by letter that he saw this bird at Spurn on the 23rd of October. Early in the morning of the 24th he saw another sitting on a hedge-top near Kilnsea: this he shot; it proved an immature male. Later in the day he saw another at Spurn, which seemed a fine old bird: Mr. Boyes shot this also, but did not recover it, as it managed to conceal itself amongst the long grass. Mr. Boyes mentions ten others shot a day or two previously to his visit. Mr. Lewis also shot one about the same time; but this bird also, like the one Mr. Boyes shot, succeeded in concealing itself in the long sea-grass. In 'The Field' for November 18th a bird of this species is recorded as shot at Sproatley, Holderness, during the first week in November. The Great Gray Shrike may be considered a very regular immigrant to our Holderness and North Lincolnshire coast at this season. Tn the Lincolnshire marshes it is common enough to have a local name, "Mutterer," a name I conclude given from its note, which, as I have heard it, resembles the knocking of two pebbles together.