Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/466

436 Ring-Ouzel has visited us, and it has occurred in this gorse before. I have no doubt these birds were Ring-Ouzels.

22nd.—Swallows appeared about the village. There is always an interval between the appearance of a few early birds and the arrival of the birds about this date in numbers.

23rd.—A Turtle-Dove seen at Woodperry by Mr. H.G. Thomson.

24th.—Cuckoo appeared.

We spent a week at a village in the Chiltern hills about this date, and were delighted to find that the Stone Curlew still inhabited the downs. We located three pairs, and examined a specimen shot at Assendon in September, 1894, and another in an old collection of birds at an inn. A portion of the 'Weekly Dispatch,' 1860, was pasted on the back of the latter case. Grasshopper Warblers were frequently heard on the gorse-covered commons, and Nightingales were not uncommon; at Henley they seemed to be more numerous, and we heard three singing at once there, and not more than fifteen yards apart. Although there is much beech-wood on the hills, we could find no Wood Wrens; in my experience this bird chiefly frequents oak-wood. We saw one day a large hawk which I believe was a Honey Buzzard (darker than a Buzzard, with more pointed wings and a longer tail) flapping slowly overhead. It passed over D'Oyly Wood towards the big woods at Stonor.

The Red-legged Partridge was seen at Stonor and Henley. A great many Peewits still breed on the slopes of the downs and the open stony fields at the foot. We saw hundreds of pairs. On April 30th we watched four young ones in down, perhaps a week old, near some penned sheep. There is a raised ridge of down to be seen at the back of the occiput, making them crested even at that early age. A Sparrowhawk took a bird from the hedge close to us, and, popping over our heads, flew, heavily cumbered, against the wind, low over a big ploughing. Time after time a Peewit rose under him, and he was mobbed all along his course, one bird handing him on to another, until he reached the shelter of the spruce and larch belt, which doubtless held his nest. Some Wheatears apparently breed on the downs; we saw two pairs. Stonechats, which I remembered very common about the juniper bushes on the hills sixteen years earlier, were very