Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/505

Rh the longest being merely and indistinctly tipped, and the shortest and outermost white its entire length, at least on the outer web. The reddish tawny mark in the wing was large and conspicuous, even when the wings were closed; but this may be a sexual characteristic, as on dissection it proved to be a male. The under parts from beak to tail were of an uniform pale grey, with a slight tinge of brown on the breast and sides. The legs (which were conspicuously longer than in the common Cuculus canorus, from the thigh-feathers to the toes) were bluish lead-colour, with a sort of silvery bloom on them, which latter soon faded; the claws were black, and it seemed to me the scales on the legs were remarkably large, as only five in number occupied the bare space. I should have mentioned, perhaps, that the beak was longer and more decurved than in the common species, and the inside of beak, which is well known to be bright orange-yellow in C. canorus, was conspicuously spotted with black, especially on the lower part of the palate, in the American bird. The tongue also had black markings on it. The bird had been feeding freely upon the grubs of some sawfly, as the distended gizzard proved, the dark heads and spotted skins of the grubs being unmistakable. I had observed very similar, if not identical, grubs a few days previously upon a rose-tree, and wondered if the comparatively mild autumn had been favourable to the development of these particular flies, as several months ago the same tree was almost stripped of its leaves by what I suppose was the same species of larva. From the few ornithological works to which I have access, it seems that this wandering bird is only a straggler to these islands, and only in the autumn, mostly in October. The occurrence of this species in Hampshire is not exactly a first record, as a specimen is reported to have been found dead in the Isle of Wight in 1896 (Zool. 1897, p. 142), but no measurements or particulars of the bird were given except that it was a male. In 'The Zoologist' for 1895, p. 376, Mr. Harting gave us a lucid description, and some interesting notes on a specimen which had been picked up dead in Dorsetshire—this also in the month of October; and of the southern counties, Devon and Cornwall claim the species in their county list of birds.

Since writing the foregoing, I showed the bird to a man who is often near the river with his gun, and without hesitation he said he saw the bird, or another like it, more than a month ago, one evening when he was out duck-shooting, and should have killed it but for the large shot in his cartridges. This was some distance from where the bird was shot, so there might have been more than one in the vicinity. (Ringwood, Hants).

Correction.—In a previous communication (ante, p. 428, three