Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/242

220 the Green Woodpecker. Possibly this may be the bird referred to in the list in question. As the author expressly states that he omits "such birds as are common," it is doubtful whether he would intend to include the Jay. With regard to the "Ptarmigan," there must be some mistake, for it is impossible to suppose that this rock-loving species, this bird of the mist and mountain, was ever met with iu haunts so uncongenial to its habits as the flats and fens of Lincolnshire. The word "Sarcelle," as every naturalist knows, is the French name for our familiar little Teal; and yet it' this be the bird referred to by the writer of ' Notitia Ludæ,' it is strange that he should have called it "rare" in Lincolnshire, where, at the date at which he wrote, it must have beeu one of the commouest of all waterfowl, being aunually taken in decoys by hundreds, not to say thousands. Should the author be still living, and read these lines, he would confer a favour by affording some explanation.—

—I recorded, at p. 135, the fact of some Manx Shearwaters having been captured alive in Oxfordshire. I am now able to add two more to the list. Mr. H. Norris, of Swalcliffe Park, near Banbury, writes me;—"As to the Manx Shearwater in my possession, I beg to say it was caught by some workmen returning home one evening in September, 1877, by the brook-side at Framington, near here. I sent it to Spicer at Leamington to be stuffed, and he informed me that it was an adult bird. I tried for two days, with fish and raw meat, to keep it alive, but it would eat nothing. I then turned it into the garden, hoping it might, like the Plovers, take to worms and slugs. There is a finer specimen than mine at a tenant's house near Chacombe, in Northamptonshire, which was caught near there."— (Bedford).

—At a recent meeting of the Natural History Society of Glasgow, the Secretary read the following note on the occurrence of the Blackcap Warbler, Sylvia atricapilla, in Scotland during winter, by Mr. Robert Gray, F.R.S.E., hon. member:—"In 1862, Mr. Osborne recorded, in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh,' that he had shot two specimens of this warbler in Caithness in the month of October. The announcement gave rise at the time to an expression of considerable doubt on the part of one of the London critics, who indeed did not hesitate to say that Mr. Osborne had made a mistake. Not long afterwards, however, other specimens having been met with even later in the season and in the same county, his suspicions were allayed by the production of the birds themselves, and the fact was thereafter made known, through one of the London magazines, that Blackcap Warblers could not only survive the rigours of our Scottish climate in Caithness, but that they could keep themselves in good condition by feeding entirely upon