Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/510

478 throat, Spotted Flycatcher, Reed Bunting, and Greenfinch, the thirtieth being the one from the nest put up. We have no Meadow Pipits here, and though I have seen in situ more than twenty nests of its congener, the Tree Pipit, not one has contained a Cuckoo's egg or young. Last year, on July 8th, a farm-lad brought me a Cuckoo's egg, and, on asking him where the other eggs in the nest were, he told me there were two lately-hatched young Hedge-sparrows in the nest, which he had not disturbed. If his story were true (and I have no reason to doubt it), this Cuckoo's egg was deposited after the incubation of the other eggs had begun. It was within two or three days of hatching. An inspection of our series of Cuckoo's eggs here would, I think, go some way to prove that the same hen Cuckoo does not always lay iu the nests of the same species, as we have eggs apparently of the same bird from the nests of the Hedge-sparrow and the Thrush; of another from the Hedge-sparrow and the Sedge Warbler; of another from the Hedge-sparrow and the Whitethroat, taken from the same ditch on the same day; and of another from the Sedge Warbler and the Reed Bunting. In each instance the resemblance of the eggs is very close, the date approximate, and the locality the same. I have recently met with an undoubted case of removal of one or more eggs while watching a Sedge Warbler's nest in a locality where Cuckoos abound. When I found the nest it was empty; on June 22nd it contained two eggs of the owner, and on June 25th only one egg of the owner and one of the Cuckoo. In conclusion, I may add that it seems to me impossible to ascertain the number of eggs laid by one of these erratic birds in the course of a season; but this year I have had five saved for me, all from nests of the Hedge-sparrow, and all undoubtedly laid by the same bird within an area of two square miles. The first was taken quite fresh on May 11th or 12th, and the last (also fresh) on June 5th.— (Tostock Rectory, Suffolk).

Economy of the Cuckoo.—Mr. H.S. Davenport may be interested to hear, in connection with the above, that I had brought to me a Meadow Pipit's nest taken on June 30th on one of our Yorkshire moors, where Cuckoos and Meadow Pipits swarm, and that the nest contained a perfectly fresh egg of the Cuckoo; but the Pipit's eggs were so much incubated that I only succeeded in blowing one of them.—

The Cirl Bunting in Breconshire.—At the present time the Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus) is a firmly established resident in this county, and is to be found in at least five or six localities. Mr. Howard Saunders, in his 'Manual of British Birds,' states that this species, he believes, was unknown in Wales until Mr. E.C. Phillips obtained one on March 15th, 1888, near Brecon; and, as most of our bird books describe it as being rare except in the South of England, perhaps a few notes as to its status in this county may be