Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/156

132 was very interesting to watch, but it was not until they were seven months old that the white chest of the drake began to appear. Mr. Knight also reared sixteen Pintail × Wild Duck hybrids, the Pintail being the male parent. These were about eight months in reaching their full plumage, and by that time the colour of the breast and head in the drakes was resplendent; but long before that their mixed parentage had been evident, even when they were only two-thirds grown. Thirteen of these hybrid ducklings were brought up under a hen, and the other three by their own parents. This month Mr. Bird was informed of a pair of Pochards being on Hickling Broad, the Duck feeding as if just off her nest, which may have been on the dryer marsh.

10th.—Swifts reappeared in Norwich (Southwell).

12th.—Chaffinch and Thrush singing at Brunstead.

13th.—Very hot day. Barn-Owls screaming.

19th.—Two young Shovelers able to fly (Bird).

20th.—Sharp thunderstorm; eighty panes of greenhouse glass broken by the hailstones.

2Ist.—A Porphyrio at Sutton Broad, and again seen afterwards, but of which species was uncertain (Bird).

22nd.—Four Cormorants on Breydon Broad (Jary).

23rd.—Black-breasted Golden Plover killed at Sidestrand. This and the one last year at Waxham are the earliest I remember.

31st.—One Cormorant on Calthorpe Broad (R. Gurney). My keeper has had two Kestrels', one Sparrow-Hawk's, one Tawny Owl's, and two Barn-Owls' nests within half a mile of his three hundred young Pheasants, which the Sparrow-Hawks have not touched; but the Kestrels have paid him several unwelcome visits. Sparrow-Hawks are not so bad for game in coops as they are often represented (cf. Heatley Noble, Zool. 1900, p. 423); they like a bird which can fly; but Kestrels are certainly worse than they used to be. I have found tame Peacocks which stray into the woods a still worse enemy, and it is difficult to defend the Carrion-Crow, whose character with gamekeepers is of the blackest; yet I still generally hear of one nest hereabouts, and have a live one at the time of writing.