Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/469

Rh Selbourne in considerable numbers about Michaelmas; and it would appear that they are usually gregarious in their autumn migrations. On their appearance in Dorsetshire in the spring, they seem, as far as my own observations extend, to be more scattered. Among the Yorkshire dales I have watched them with much interest in the breeding-season, when the hill-sides echo the day through with their wild notes, and have observed the boldness with which they endeavour to repel any intruder from their nests: these are found in numbers at the base of the blocks of stone that are strewn over the moors, and on stooping down to examine the eggs I have been quite startled with the audacity with which the parent birds will fly in a direct line towards you, only diverging with a loud chatter when within a foot or so of your face. In that district they would not unfrequently be seen from the parlour windows, hunting for worms on the grass-plots much after the manner of our Blackbirds in the southern counties.— (Leytonstone).

(p. 298).—From a short note in Wise's 'New Forest' it seems that the breeding of the Hobby was a wellrecognized fact at the time of the publication of that work, although its annual decrease was particularly noticed. That the species has become comparatively scarce cannot be questioned; but it is equally certain that it visits, if it does not breed in, the extensive woods of the New Forest almost every season, for scarcely a summer passes but one or more specimens are sent to me from that neighbourhood, and generally in June, when I conjecture they would be nesting. On the 5th of August, 1876, a gamekeeper in the Forest sent a beautiful pair of these birds for me to see, which he said he had shot from the nest; but on questioning him as to whether the nest contained eggs or young (being so late in the season), he eluded the question by saying he "believed" they were nesting near, but that he had not discovered the nest. In the previous year a young bird was sent me from the same locality, and its wing-feathers were not sufficiently grown to enable any extended flight, so it must have been reared somewhere near. The same year a pair built a nest, or rather appropriated an old one, in a wood within two miles of Ringwood, but the female was shot before she laid an egg, and subsequently the male disappeared. The Hobby is said to arrive in the New Forest, where it is locally known as the "Van-winged Hawk," about the same time as the Honey Buzzard formerly did; but I fear eventually it will share the fate of the latter bird, which has ceased to visit us for several consecutive seasons; and no wonder, since the epithet of "vermin" has been bestowed upon all its race; and the exorbitant price offered by dealers, both for birds and eggs, has gradually led to its extinction.— (Ringwood, Hants).

—On the 18th of August my father saw a Hooded Crow here. On the 20th I saw it again in my