Correspondence.



123



noticed them touch either soft food or fruit. I should very much like to have

them named, as I am intending to try and breed from them this season.


Wm. Shore-Baily.


The question in my mind is whether our member’s birds are even examples

of the family Icteridce. In the late Dr. Sclater’s Catalogue of the Tanagridce

and Icteridce in the British Museum I can find no description of any purplish-

black species of troupial with white wing-coverts ; indeed the only species in the

volume which seems to approach Mr. Shore-Baily’s description is the black

tanager (Tnchyphonus melaleucus) ; but Dr. Sclater does not mention the white

on the central tail-feathers of the hen : still it must be remembered that all the

descriptions in that volume of the Catalogue are cut down to the closest limit

possible.


When I first received the silky cowbird of Argentina, now many years

ago, I wrote to the late Mr. Abrahams describing the species to him and asking

him whether it was likely to be the black tanager. He replied that if it did not

possess the white wing-coverts it was the silky cowbird, and on looking the two

birds up at the Natural History Museum I was able to confirm his statement.


A. G. Butler.



[We take this extract from “ Country Life.”]


SIR SCHOMBERG MCDONNELL’S CARE OF WILD BIRDS.


SIR,—May I add my tribute to the memory of Sir Schomberg McDonnell,

whose death was so feelingly recorded in your Christmas number ? He was a keen

ornithologist. The Royal parks are under the control of the Office of Works, and

during his secretaryship, Sir Schomberg, as I can bear witness, took the greatest

interest in the preservation of the birds, particularly those in Richmond Park,

It was there that I met him. One Sunday afternoon in April, 1911, as I was

watching a family of great crested grebes on the Pen Pond, a gentleman joined

me who, after borrowing my binoculars to look at the grebes, suggested a walk.

In previous years herons, which nest in the Park, had sometimes carried off the

young grebes, and my companion, who, it was clear, was someone in authority,

told me that, in order to preserve the grebes, he had given orders to the keepers

to shoot any marauding heron which might he caught red-handed. I soon found

that this pleasant stranger had an intimate knowledge of the birds to be found

in the Park. Among other things, he told me that he had once seen a cirl-

bunting there - ‘‘a harmony in chocolate and lemon” was his description of the

bird. Could anything be more apt ? Presently he asked if I would care to go

into Sidmouth plantation to see the heronry. Of course, I gladly assented. As

he unlocked the gate into the wood a keeper asked his name, and it was then

that I learnt that my new friend was Sir Schomberg McDonnell, at that time

secretary to the Office of Works. He asked me to let him know if I discovered

anything out of the common in my frequent visits to the Park and accordingly



