Hoopoe, Carrion Crow, 315 



almost to fear we shall not have any [VII. 4?65~\ this season. 

 — Id. May 14. 1836. 



This is the most backward spring we have had for many 

 years past. — Dr. Net 11. Canonmills Cottage, Edinburgh, in a 

 letter dated March 31. 1836. 



This is a cold and dreary spring. I saw the cuckoo twelve 

 days ago, but, as yet, I have not heard its song. Nearly all the 

 summer birds of passage have arrived. (From a letter from C. 

 Waterton, Esq., Walton Hall, Yorkshire, dated April 27. 1836.) 



Winter seems to have driven spring quite out of the field ; 

 nothing here but gloomy skies, frosty nights, hail-storm days, 

 and a north-east wind. — Id. May 5. 1836.) 



Art. X. Short Communications. 



The Hoopoe (VIII. 511.), an individual of, was shot on 

 Sept. 26. 1835. at Tinnerana, in the county Clare, the estate 

 of Simon Purdon, Esq., who sent the bird to me. It was 

 excessively fat ; the stomach was strongly membranous, and 

 contained the remains of caterpillars, and the wing coverts of 

 a beetle. — T. K. Toomavara, Ireland, Feb. 12. 1836. 



The Carrion Crow (Corvus Corone) ; the Subjects of its 

 Food, and that- of the Term of its Age. — Rather a curious 

 circumstance happened, while I was in the southern end of 

 Dorsetshire, in August 1835, with regard to the carrion crow 

 (Corvus Corone). A labourer was cleaning out a pond in the 

 park, and, when returning from his breakfast, saw a snake 

 (Coluber iVatrix) crossing towards a plantation near; he killed 

 it, and in its inside was a loach (Cobitis Taenia), which it had 

 just swallowed. In the course of the day, he saw a crow 

 alight, and then fly off with the snake. This is a kind of 

 food additional to those which are mentioned by Bewick, 

 and which I think has not before been noticed. 



There are two of these crows, constant inhabiters of the 

 place. One had its leg broken by a shot from a man, now 

 living in the parish, upwards of sixteen years ago. — A Young 

 Naturalist. [Received on March 3. 1836.] 



A Bird's Nest with an Egg in it, found within the Wood of 

 an Oak Tree. — While two sawyers, in Messrs. Garland and 

 Horsburgh's ship-building yard, Dundee, were employed in 

 cutting up an oak log into planks, they discovered a neatly 

 built wren's nest, with an egg in it, firmly embedded in the heart 

 of the wood ; which situation, considering the age of the tree, it 

 may have occupied for more than fifty years. (Quoted in 

 The Suti London newspaper of Dec. 18. 1835, as from the 

 Dumfries Courier.) 



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