^"i' ol^ 1 From Magazines, &c. 75 



BuTCHER-BlRDS. — Mr. Donald Macdonald, in his " Nature 

 Notes" {Argus, 31/8/06), quotes a correspondent who states : — 

 " Last Friday morning, hearing a disturbance amongst the 

 Honey-eaters in the sapUngs, I noticed that a Butcher-Bird had 

 caught one of them and killed it. Then, after warbling and 

 and kicking up a fuss for some time, he flew up into a large gum 

 tree, and, placing the neck of the dead bird in a dry fork, hung on 

 to the lower part of the body and tugged at it till the bird was a 

 fixture, suspended by the neck. I have noticed this done on 

 several occasions by this bird. Once it came back some hours 

 later and devoured its prey." 



An Illumined Migration. — The ornithologists of Phila- 

 delphia, U.S.A., had a unique chance of observing the move- 

 ments of migatory birds on the night of the 27th March last, 

 when a large lumber yard took fire, and burned right through 

 the night. In the glare of the flames appeared hundreds of 

 small birds passing steadily across the heavens, from south-west 

 to north-east, on the spring migration. Mr. Witmer Stone, who 

 records his observations made at the time in The Auk for July, 

 says that he believes the migrants were not influenced by the 

 fire as to direction of flight, but that probably it attracted them 

 to a lower level than usual. Not all the birds passed the fire in 

 safety. " Occasionally a bird would fly over at a much lower 

 altitude than the main body, and if it happened to pass over 

 any part of the burning area it seldom escaped destruction. 

 Up in mid-air, apparently clear of flame and smoke, though 

 evidently within range of the terrible heat, a slender thread of 

 silvery smoke came trailing out of the unfortunate bird, like the 

 unfurling of a skein of yarn ; it would fly wildly, and then, 

 bursting into flame, fall into the roaring furnace below. I saw 

 twenty or thirty birds perish thus during the evening." 



Little Green Pigeon. — In some notes on "The Green- 

 winged Pigeons of the Genus Chalcophaps" in the July number 

 of The Avicultural Magazine, Mr. D. Seth-Smith, F.Z.S., says :— 

 " The Australasian species is far less often imported than the 

 Indian form, and, I believe, has never been bred in captivity 

 until this year. Early last January I obtained a pair of 

 C. chrysochlora from New Caledonia, and later a male of the 

 same species from Queensland. The latter specimen is a 

 remarkably fine bird, somewhat larger than the first male, which 

 he soon challenged for the possession of the hen, which was also 

 a very fine bird. I had to remove the New Caledonian male, or 

 he would have soon been bullied to death by his stronger rival, 

 and the remaining pair soon set about selecting a nesting-site. 



