340 BRITISH BIRDS. 



and still less frequently shot or recorded — in fact, I can only 

 call to mind a single example being shot during the last fifteen 

 years. It is, therefore, perhaps worth recording that a small 

 flock of eight or ten have spent this last winter off the east 

 Sussex coast between Hastings and Pevensey Bay. They appear 

 to have arrived about the middle of November, 1910, and 

 have been seen by several people, sometimes close in-shore. 

 Six of them have been killed at different times ; a fine adult 

 male was shot on November 23rd, and, with a female obtained 

 on January 15th, 1911, has been acquired for the Hastings 

 Museum. Two more adult males were shot, on Decem'ber 31st 

 and January 19th ; an immature male, having only a few white 

 feathers on its neck, on January 2nd, and a second female on 

 January 29th, 1911. ^ N, F. Ticehurst. 



SNIPE PURSUED BY FALCONS. 

 On March 5th, 1911, on returning from a walk up the Itchen 

 Valley (Hants), and while passing the edge of a wood through 

 which the road ran, a bird suddenly came at a great pace 

 straight through the branches and ivj" leaves overhead, and 

 settled on the road. I saAv it Avas a Snipe {Gallinago ccelestis) 

 and it immediately ran up into some bushes near the road. 

 A moment after I heard screams above and saw two " hawks " 

 hovering, and parrying at one another. For a few seconds 

 they continued, then separated and flew off in different 

 directions. I then went up to the Snipe and had almost 

 touched it when it rose in a fluster and flew slowly away, 

 almost touching the ground, and ahghted some thirty yards 

 off up the road, where it squatted flat. 



Shortly afterwards I saw one of the " hawks " wheehng 

 round some distance off, and descend some thirty feet nearer 

 the earth ; then it came flying slowly over, and I distinctly 

 saw that it was a Peregrine {Falco peregrinus). It passed on 

 and disappeared. In about three minutes the Snipe also rose 

 and flew s\Aiftly away. The Falcon had evidently stooped 

 at it, and its companion had probably done so also, and so 

 had caused both to miss it. 



There were as many as fifty or sixty Snipe in the flooded 

 meadow by the river, and they were flushed in flocks of from 

 fifteen to twenty birds in each. I observed one " drumming " 

 and giving its call, and I think this was the bird stooped at 

 by the Falcon, as it was the only one which had remained 

 fl3dng about. J. M. Charlton. 



EARLY " DRUMMING " OF SNIPE. 

 With reference to Mr, Tom Smith's note re the " drumming " 



