Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/155

Rh on Headington Hill. I think it not impossible that the Tree Pipit may occasionally winter with us; it has been observed in November and also in February ('Yarrell,' ed. iii. vol. i.p. 570), and the extreme mildness of the past winter may well have helped to keep alive a stray individual who was hindered by some accident from joining his fellows in migration.— (Lincoln College, Oxford).

Early nesting of the House Sparrow in the present mild Season.— In proof of the mildness of the season, I send you (Feb. 24th) a young Passer domesticus. It was sent to me by a friend near here. His boy saw four together in the garden, and he made a snow-ball and threw it at them, knocking this one over. It must, I think, have been hatched in January.— (Huntworth House, near Bridgwater).

The Brambling in Hants.—Very large flocks of this handsome Finch (Fringilla montifringilla) have visited the neighbourhood of the New Forest, and in smaller quantities the woods on the other side of the Avon. Some idea of the numbers frequenting certain spots in the forest may be gathered from the fact of a man killing twenty-nine, and wounding others, at a single shot. This reads very like "murder," and to a true lover of birds it is a sad record, yet the fact remains; and I find that the numbers above quoted have in some instances been exceeded in other localities where the species has previously appeared, as in the case cited in 'Yarrell' from the observations of the late Mr. Stevenson, who records that forty-five birds were killed at a single shot near Slough, indicating how vast must be the flocks which sometimes visit us. In previous winters I have noticed the occurrence of this particular species only in very severe weather, when the birds frequented rick-yards and like situations in company with Sparrows, Yellow Buntings, &c.; but I am told that this season there is an unusually large crop of beech-mast in the forest, and this, notwithstanding the hitherto mild winter, may be the great attraction, for it appears to be a food of which the birds are very fond. Those I saw were literally "crammed" with portions of the beech-nuts; some of them had the whole seed in their beaks, and the birds were very plump and fat. The man who shot them told me there was a conspicuously dark bird amongst the multitude he saw feeding on the ground beneath the trees, but it seemed to have fortunately escaped the fate of its fellows. Very little variation was observable in those I inspected, except that the tawny markings upon the breast and wing-coverts were redder, and the black bars in the wings more intense in some than in others, but not more than would be expected in birds of a different age. In some previous records of this winter visitor I notice that a preponderance of males has been seen, thus resembling the winter flocks of its