Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/365

Rh Rutland,' published in 1889, the author refers to the Grey Wagtail as follows:—"A winter migrant, sparingly distributed, and not recorded as remaining to breed in the counties." The sentence italicised is wholly misleading and contrary to the fact. In the spring of 1878 I found the Grey Wagtail nesting in the bank of the Eye Brook, close to Skeffington Wood; the young were fledged by the end of the first week in May, and there was an addled egg left in the nest, on which, by the way, I one morning discovered the hen-bird sitting. This was the first verified instance of the species breeding in Leicestershire; yet, in spite of remonstrance, my note on the subject was discarded by the author of the work quoted above on the score that I must have mistaken the Yellow, or Ray's, for the Grey Wagtail! Nevertheless, apart from the fact that, according to my experience, Yellow Wagtails do not repair to the banks of streams for purposes of nidification, I should consider the end of the first week in May in any year an early date for a full clutch of eggs of this species (vide Zool. 1896, p. 354). I should add that the Curator of the Leicester Museum has since expressed regrets at having excluded—on no other grounds but those of unwarranted scepticism—a perfectly authenticated communication on a subject of interest to all scientific ornithologists in this midland county, he himself having chanced upon a pair of Grey Wagtails breeding within the last half-dozen years somewhere or other in the Loughborough district. It has been well said that seeing is believing! While recognizing and making full allowance for the difficulties encountered by compilers in sifting the wheat from the chaff when engaged in ornithological researches with a view to publication, and, at the same time, cordially approving of the judgment which prompts the suppression of the thousand and one notes which deal with the fancied identification of rare species here and there as they momentarily flit across the gaze of the observer, one cannot help regretting that duly authenticated discoveries, backed by "chapter and verse" and all the proof that can be considered needful, should be excluded from embodiment in what purposes to be the trustworthy history of a county's avifauna, and so lost to science. And my lament, too, is the more emphasized when I reflect that such exclusion is capable of being based upon what I can only designate as mere editorial caprice.— (Ormandyne, Melton Mowbray).

White Wagtails in Warwickshire.—Amongst the many Pied Wagtails that visit the locality of Sutton Coldfield during their spring movements, I have for years been on the look-out for the White Wagtail, Motacilla alba, amongst their numbers. On May 2nd I was pleased to be able to identify a pair of these birds along the dams of Wyndley Pool, which were so tame as to allow me to advance within a few feet of them. Walking thence to Powell's Pool, another pair were noticed amongst a quantity of Pied