Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/301

Rh others—have recorded that small birds will mob a Cuckoo from its similarity in appearance to a hawk.—]

Peculiar Nesting Habit of the House Sparrow.—We have a colony of Sparrows which build nests in a creeper on the front of our house. This year the creeper was very slow in coming out, and the nests were therefore very visible to the naked eye; so the Sparrows took a great number of leaves from a tree in front of the house and stuck them about the creeper, with the view apparently of covering up its deficiencies. Of course they dropped four for every one they fixed in the creeper, and those they did get there were soon blown down; but they nearly stripped the side of the tree next the house.— (54, Highbury Hill, N.).

Change of Plumage in the Nonpareil Finch.—Last summer I purchased a Nonpareil Finch, Cyanospiza ciris, from a local dealer. When I first had the bird its breast-feathers were scarlet, but since its last moult they have become orange. I should be glad if any readers of 'The Zoologist' could inform me if there is any method of restoring the scarlet colour of the feathers at the next moult. The bird itself is in the best of health, and sings well, and I may say the blue of the head and the green feathers on the back leave nothing to be desired. It is kept in a roomy cage, has plenty of exercise, and in addition to ordinary seed diet has abundance of insect food. I am aware that Nonpareils in captivity are very liable to lose colour, and should be glad of any suggestion as to feeding, &c, which might enable me to remedy this.— (Sale Bridge House, Sale, Cheshire).

Occurrence of the Black-headed Bunting in Sussex.—Early in January of the present year, while looking over some birds in the possession of Mr. Daniel Francis, I recognized an example, in adult female plumage, of the Black-headed Bunting, Euspiza, or, as it is more generally called, Emberiza melanocephala. It was given to Mr. Francis on the morning of Nov. 3rd, 1894—the day on which, as Gould supposed, the first British example was killed twenty-six years before—by one of the men of the coastguard service, who had just picked it up in an exhausted condition close to the metals on the South Coast line of railway near Bexhill. The bird had a shattered wing, and had probably been shot at while perched on the telegraph-wires. Through my friend's kindness the specimen is now in my possession. The original British specimen was shot in this county in November, 1868, and is in the choice collection of Sussex birds formed by Mr. Monk, of Lewes. Since that year it has occurred twice in other parts of Britain, so that the present makes the fourth record. During the breeding season the species is "abundant in Asia Minor, all through the Caucasus" mountains, but it rarely extends westward or northward of the