284 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



dated 13th September 1905, kindly supplies the following 

 particulars : — 



" On the gth inst. Mr. James Wilcock of Asperlands, High 

 Bentham, informed me that he had been watching three 

 small and very beautiful birds, which were quite new to 

 him, and that they were very busy eating his bees. He 

 described how one of the birds would take up its stand just 

 at the mouth of the skep, and with its hard bill stab a bee 

 as it emerged, and promptly swallow it. He saw one bird 

 take eight bees in that way, and at least other two birds 

 of a precisely similar build and colouration had been seen 

 working in co-operation. Finally, he managed to secure 

 one, caught in the very act of seizing and swallowing bees. 

 That he brought to me, and it proved to be a male Bee- 

 eater." 



The late date of the Bentham record, gth September, 

 and the statement that three of these birds had been seen 

 working together, are very interesting facts. 



[The only European example on record of the Blue-tailed 

 Bee-eater [Merops phillipensis, L.), which is an inhabitant 

 of India, Burmah, and the Islands of the East, is the one 

 mentioned by the late John Hancock (" Birds of Northd. 

 and Dm." 1874, p. 28), as having occurred in August 1862, 

 near Seaton Snook, a place on the Durham side of the Tees- 

 mouth, by Thomas Hann of Byers Green. This passed 

 into the possession of the Rev, T. M. Hick of Newburn. 

 Whatever may be the facts relating to this episode, the 

 occurrence is quite inexplicable. The locality where the bird 

 was obtained is, however, actually on the Yorkshire side 

 of the river, and therefore within the scope of the present 

 work. Thomas Hann was well known to me, and to George 

 Mussell, the Middlesbrough taxidermist. He called at Mussell's 

 house in Middlesbrough on the day on which the bird was 

 killed and detailed to him how he had been to the " Branch 

 End," where he was sitting on a slag ball when the bird 

 alighted near him and was shot. He subsequently told Mussell 

 that he came by train from Eston, and that he was offered 



