Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/520

494 from rock to rock by the side of the stream: they were in the nestling plumage, their white under parts showing a yellowish tint closely marked with faint semicircular lines. Young Green Woodpeckers were also numerous in the adjoining woods; and a beautiful young male, fully fledged, was caught by a friend of mine when fishing, as it was struggling in the river, having, I suppose, fallen from some tree or bush, or perhaps failed in an attempt to fly across the stream. Both the Great and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers have bred in the woods by the side of the Tamar this season. Swifts were exceedingly plentiful, and I observed some feeding their young in the holes of an old pillar or high stone wall, intended for a kind of railway viaduct. Sand Martins, too, again occupied holes in the banks of the Tamar, the only breeding locality for them that I am aware of anywhere within many miles of Plymouth. Strange to say about a dozen Swifts were lately captured by taking the artificial flies of fishermen on the River Dart, an incident which has been immortalised by Bewick in one of his vignettes. A fine Shag which I examined was in perfect breeding plumage, with the exception of the curved crest, which is usually lost by the middle of June; but I have seen old birds with a fine, glossy, greenish black and bronzed plumage in the middle of winter.

In my last notes I mentioned having visited a small heronry near St. Germains. I have since been informed by a clergyman living in the locality, that with the aid of a long ladder he once endeavoured to look into one of the nests, but the instant his face appeared on a level with the edge a young bird made a sudden and vicious thrust straight at his eye, in evading which he nearly fell headlong from the tree.

On July 4th Blackcaps and Garden Warblers were still singing in the woods by the side of the Tamar, whilst large families of Blue and Cole Tits were already flitting from tree to tree, swinging and hanging from the branches in every conceivable posture, the parents assiduously attending to the wants of their young.

The young Gulls at Wembury were by this time for the most part fledged, though some were still in the down. A large colony of Martins were nesting on the face of the cliffs, and it was very curious to see them when flying past make a dash at the small feathers or particles of down which came from the Gulls, as if they were insects. A Herring Gull has for many years been in the