Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/184

158 planted along the path by the river. A male without a tail had a most extraordinary appearance.

.—Fairly common; about the edges of woods, &c.

.—I heard the note of this bird in the Bois de Roquet.

.—I saw four males and one female. A male flew past one day with a cockchafer in his bill. Having settled on a bare branch, he put the chafer under foot and devoured it piecemeal, giving two or three harsh notes of satisfaction at the finish.

.—Not very numerous, and far less so than the next species.

.—Abundant. All up the Meuse from Namur, as we approached Dinant on a wet evening, the House Martins were conspicuous over the river, and they were numerous at Dinant, and about a large farm in the Lesse valley. In Givet they were in some numbers, and bred unmolested in the corners of windows, as well as under the eaves. In these towns there are not the swarms of Sparrows that we have. A crowd of Martins were collecting mud at a small pond at Sanzinne, and the same day we found them swarming in Houyet, a typical Ardenne village devoted to cows. It is quite a pleasure to see any number of Martins, for it is some years since I have seen a building well decorated with nests in England.

.—A small colony in a shallow sand-pit near Agimont. As they were common over the Meuse about Dinant, I supposed that some bred in holes between the stones of the built-up river banks, and other supporting walls where roads had been cut out, for I saw no sandy places in the immediate neighbourhood. Yet all day they skimmed low over the water, and they haunted the river more than either Swallows or House Martins.

.—Seen occasionally.

.—Did not swarm as with us.

.—Seen about young apple trees at Agimont; a pair near Houyet, and others in a garden there. The Tree Sparrow appears to be rather a common bird in Belgium.

.—Common; in the roadside trees in the