\yO From Magazines, &c. [..f^ln 



hecki, Heinroth. The part of Australia from which the birds 

 were procured was not known to Dr. Heinroth. The present 

 specimen, Mr. North was informed by Mr. Percy Peir, was 

 caught with others, also masked Grass-Finches {PoepJiila 

 personata, Gould) a few miles from Burrundie, Port Darv/in 

 district. Mr. North had seen many living examples from the 

 same district, also from the neighbourhood of Wyndham, North- 

 western Australia." 



Cuckoos. — Observations on the European Cuckoo, by Mr. J. 

 H. Gurney, appear in TJie Zoologist for May. The t^^ was 

 found in a nest with Accentor's eggs on 22nd May. On 31st 

 May an Accentor's ^^^ was hatched, but shell and young 

 disappeared. The Cuckoo's Q.g,^ and the other two eggs hatched 

 2nd June. On 3rd June both young Accentors lay dead on the 

 edge of the nest, which the young Cuckoo occupied alone. By 

 way of experiment, a young Wren was put into the nest several 

 times, and always ejected until the 5th June, when the desire for 

 ejecting other nestlings apparently ceased. The back cavity 

 had disappeared by the 6th June. The dead Accentors dis- 

 appeared on the 9th, and an old Cuckoo appeared near the nest. 

 The young Cuckoo left the nest on the 22nd. In the June 

 number of the same magazine Mr. W. W. Flemyng describes 

 how an acquaintance of his saw a Cuckoo lay its &^^ on the 

 ground a few yards away from a Titlark's nest with three eggs, 

 to which it then carried its own egg in its bill. When it left the 

 nest it had one of the Titlark's eggs in its bill, and this it placed 

 on the ground near the nest, broken in two. 



The September-October issue of Bird-Lore is described as a 

 "Winter-Feeding Number," and contains articles and notes that 

 show what may be done to save small birds from starvation 

 when the ground is covered with snow — a condition that is 

 fortunately so rare and local with us that the subject has merely 

 an exotic interest. A strange people, the Americans. Here 

 are two paragraphs from the same issue of this paper : — 



" One committee devotes itself to obtaining bird food, and 

 money to buy food, and sometimes calls to its assistance such 

 available outsiders as may be able to help. There are very few 

 people in any American town who will refuse to help such work 

 along in one way or another, if the matter is brought directly to 

 their attention in the proper way." 



"At Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, a great number of 

 these migrating birds (Purple Martins) gathered the past 

 summer (1905), and chose as their nightl}^ roosting place the 

 grove of a summer hotel. The proprietor, wishing to rid himself 



