HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



141 



Birds and the Hard Weather. — The various 

 notes which have appeared on this subject have been 

 read with much interest by us, especially Air. 

 Bingham's paper, Science-Gossip, page 70. We 

 also, during the long severe winter, just experienced, 

 have diligently fed twice a day our poor feathered 

 friends ; very delightful and pleasant it has been to 

 watch the instinctive knowledge, almost amounting to 

 reason, which appeared to bring them at the exact 

 time their food was regularly put out for them. At 

 the first appearance of the frost and snow, about the 

 end of November, we had not only large numbers of 

 sparrows, robins, and tom-tits, but also a good gather- 

 ing of blackbirds, male chaffinches, and thrushes ; 

 eagerly they assembled on the trees to watch for the 

 first crumbs thrown out, their bright, intelligent eyes 

 quickly detecting the breakfast or dinner on the table. 

 Soon, however, the cold of our northern climate was 

 too severe for the thrushes, and about the middle of 

 December they quite left us, but not before two of 

 their number came to an untimely end : one was 

 caught by the cat, its poor wings being too much 

 frozen to fly away from pussy's reach, the second 

 came into the house, as if to ask for help, but before 

 it could be given it fell down dead. Both were evi- 

 dently not only frozen, but starved to death. As 

 the cold weather continued, we had, about Christinas, 

 the magpies and rooks, in addition to our other birds. 

 The rooks gradually increased in numbers each day, 

 until on one occasion thirty-one were counted on the 

 trees. Their favourite food appeared to be meat ; we 

 threw out some fowls' bones one morning, which 

 seemed to be a great treat to them, for they carried 

 away both the flesh and the bones. In the early part 

 of December we had the starlings, but they soon left 

 us, and have only recently (March 2) returned to us. 

 Also on that day four thrushes again appeared, and 

 regaled us with their sweet, thrilling song. It may 

 not be without interest here to remark that we believe 

 the thrushes do not leave England, but the late 

 severe winter has driven them south. A lady friend 

 living in Buckingham, who has been feeding the 

 birds this winter, told us in a letter that she had 

 twelve thrushes each morning. The blackbirds have 

 remained pretty much with us, though they have 

 been, with other small birds, greatly thinned by our 

 neighbours, during the frost and snow, amusing them- 

 selves by shooting our valued feathered friends. And 

 most cruel it appears, so to take advantage of their 

 half-starved state, especially as they have come to us 

 in confiding trust to have their unspoken wants re- 

 lieved ! The fieldfares have been numerous, and the 

 heron has been seen flying over this neighbourhood, 

 rather an unusual circumstance. We also were 

 visited by a rat, which not only partook of the food 

 thrown out for the birds, but burrowed close to the 

 window. We were not quite so kind to him as was 

 Mr. Bingham to his rat, for we set a trap, which, 

 though it was not strong enough to secure him, had 

 the effect of driving the poor fellow to seek a home 

 elsewhere. — Elizabeth Edwards, Stoke, Stafford. 



Cuckoo's Visits.— It may be interesting to know 

 that during the last summer and for the preceding 

 four or five years, I have noticed a cuckoo frequenting 

 this locality (a suburb of London). I have seen it 

 repeatedly upon the trees overhanging and adjoining 

 my small garden, and upon one occasion it remained 

 perched upon a rail in front of my fowl-house for 

 more than half an hour. I cannot say positively that 

 it was the same bird, but it was (or they were) always 

 small, and as cuckoos vary considerably in size (I 

 have shot many) I have no doubt that such was 

 the case. — y. I., Brixton. 



The Cuckoo's Eggs.— Having had a good deal 

 of experience with regard to cuckoos and their eggs, 

 perhaps the following remarks, the result of my own 

 observations, may not be without interest to " Junior " 

 and others of your correspondents. My experience 

 agrees with that of the writer in the April number, 

 p. 95, for out of all the numbers I have discovered I 

 never took one from a nest built on the ground. With 

 one exception, to be mentioned presently, I found 

 them all in the nests of the hedge-sparrow and wag- 

 tail. Those from the latter were generally similar to 

 the eggs in the nest (but larger of course), and had 

 streaks, and not spots. The exception to which I 

 have referred just above was one taken from a common 

 wren's nest, which was built in furze placed in hurdles 

 in order to make jumps for horses. This egg was 

 smaller than any other cuckoo's which I have seen. 

 There were six wren's eggs in the nests with it. I 

 have never found more than one egg in the same nest. 

 — F. Anderson, Chichester. 



Black Bullfinches. — Hemp seed will, I know 

 from experience, darken the plumage of most birds, 

 and bullfinches are especially liable to change colour 

 if much of this seed is given to them, although they 

 are particularly fond of it. I had a bullfinch that 

 turned black in the same way as "St. Austell" de- 

 scribes his to have done, but my bird did not lose his 

 vocal powers, and was in perfect health. I saw a 

 black bullfinch not long since in a cottage window, 

 and went in to ask the mistress, who keeps a village 

 shop, if she gave the bird hemp seed, but she said it 

 had grown up black. She had taken it, I discovered, 

 from the nest, and its plumage had from the first 

 been black. — Mrs. Alfred Watney. 



Tree Sparrow. — In looking over some odd 

 numbers of an old periodical, I saw a short account 

 of this bird. Amongst other particulars, it stated 

 that it had only been found breeding in seven English 

 counties ; and as I have frequently found it nesting 

 here (North Yorkshire), I thought the following 

 notes concerning it might not prove uninteresting to 

 the ornithological readers of Science-Gossip. It 

 most usually constructs its nest in the hollow parts 

 of trees, especially where a hole has been formed by 

 the breaking away of a branch. But this is not in- 

 variably the case, for in the year 1876 I found a 

 perfect colony of them nesting in the roof of an 

 implement shed attached to a farm. There had been 

 a heap of thorns laid upon a few cross beams, and 

 upon these the usual thatch of straw had been laid. 

 It was in the thorns that the nests were found. There 

 were over a dozen of them, besides several of those 

 of the house sparrow ; and all of them contained 

 either eggs or young. On revisiting the place again 

 last year, I only found one or two nests, all the 

 "good holes" being apparently occupied by the 

 house sparrow, to the exclusion of its smaller relative. 

 — y. A. JVheldon, North Allerton. 



Curious Sites for Birds' Nests. — Your corres- 

 pondent on the above subject does not mention the 

 prolific site that an old magpie's nest affords, and the 

 number of birds that make use of it after the original 

 builders have done with it ; from my own experience 

 as a "birds'-nester," I have taken the eggs of kestrel, 

 sparrow, hawk, brown owl, blackbird, thrush, starling, 

 stock-dove, pied wagtail, redstark, nuthatch, creeper, 

 great tit, blue tit, and once, built in the cross sticks 

 of the dome, the nest of the long-tailed tit ; when 

 magpies were more plentiful than they are here now, 

 their old nests were an almost certain find for stock 

 doves, and many a pair of eggs and young have I 

 taken from them. — G. T. 



