Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/497

Rh times, and seemed to endeavour to settle on the same twig, but it did not do so, and had disappeared when T left. The incident was a great surprise to me, as I had never heard that the Swift was in the habit of perching, even occasionally, much less settling down for the night in such a place and position—not really perched, but vertically suspended like a great hawk-moth. The Swifts have not all left here. I saw about a dozen flying over the main street this morning.— (Scarborough).

Common Roller in Sussex.—I have received in the flesh, obtained on Sept. 24th at Catslield, near Battle, Sussex, an adult female Roller, Coracias garrulus; weight, 5 oz.; contents of gizzard, fragments of Geotrupes. It had been seen for several days by the keeper who shot it, and who considered it a kind of " Galley-bird," which is the local name for the Green Woodpecker. Markwich, who lived at Catsfield, recorded, in the ' Transactions ' of the Linnean Society, one shot near Crowhurst Church on Sept. 22nd, 1790, almost the same date. Borrer, in his 'Birds of Sussex,' records it last in 1870.— (Hastings).

Survival of the Kingfisher.—I was interested in reading Mr. Farman's account of the rarity of the Kingfisher in the Norfolk Fens ('Zoologist' for August, p. 354). Few matters ornithological have pleased me more in recent years than the abundance of the species, according to my experience. In this neighbourhood, within seventeen miles of London, the bird is common. Wherever I fish my experience is the same. Near Dulverton, where one constantly sees them on the Exe and Barle, there is a fish-hatching establishment, and, commenting one day on the traps set for the unfortunate birds, the keeper told me he had caught as many as thirty in a season. Near Malvern there is another similar establishment, and there I was told as many as sixty had been killed in a year. As the locality is far from suited to the habits of the species, I asked the keeper whether he supposed they had been attracted from a distance. His reply was that in his opinion they all came from the immediate neighbourhood—that the bird was really very common, but seldom seen on account of its retiring habits. In different parts of Herefordshire I generally see one or two when out fishing. My experience has been the same in other localities. There have been recent references also in the newspapers to the supposed scarcity of the Kingfisher. My own hope and belief is that, although such scarcity may exist here and there, the species as a species is widespread and abundant.

I do not know whether Canon Ingram would consider that what happened in the "fifties" came under the description of "modern history," as used by him in his note about the Wood Pigeons; but numbers must remember, as I do, the Rooks that in 1854 and 1855—how much later I Zool, 4th ser. vol. I., October, 1897.