Correspondence.



237



“ glossy blue-black,” it has the nape pale-buff, the scapularies and lower back

ashy white, the wing-coverts are not white, the middle tail-feathers are not

white; the feet are not black, but flesh-pink, and the beak is horn-colour, darker

towards tip of upper mandible, not grey. The hen is not entirely bright bay,

but is not unlike the male in winter plumage, but slightly smaller. I must

therefore adhere to my original opinion until some bird a little nearer to Mr.

Shore-Baily’s description is indicated. A. G. BUTLER.


‘‘A SPRING MIGRANT” (MAY NUMBER p. 210).


To the Editor of the Avicultural Magazine.


SIR,—Will you kindly allow me space to set right some printer’s errors in

these verses, which destroy the intended meaning of their respective lines?

Stanza 5. Last line. There should be no stop—or at most a comma—after “flies.”

Stanza6. 2nd line. For “The fabled eagle ” read “ Thy fabled eagle ” (because

the fable relates to the bird-family, is a bird-tradition, and naturally the

willow-wren would know it.)


Ibid. Last line. For “deaths” read “depths.” (The idea being this: that

since the depths are—by poetic licence—seen from the zenith, they will

be infinite ; as, indeed, in sober fact, they almost are when seen from the

lately recorded aeroplane height of 29,000 feet the height of Mt. Everest!

I must also plead guilty to one mistake in my own MS., viz :


Stanza 3. Last line. For the full stop after “ sleep ” put a semi-colon.


I am, your obedient servant,


The Writer of the Lines,


[We greatly regret these errors. The writer failed to receive a proof of the

poem.—ED.]


“HEARING OF PHEASANTS AND OTHER BIRDS.”


SIR,—I have read Mr. C. Barnby Smith’s letter ( ante pp. 200-201) on the

“Hearing of Pheasants and other birds” with much interest, because, from the

facts he brings forward it would appear that the reason of wild pheasants

“crowing” on hearing distant gun-fire is directly due to their latent fear of

being shot. Up to the time of reading Mr. Smith’s letter I had held the view

that pheasants “crowed ” because the concussion of heavy firing in some way

worked on their nervous systems, and that these “nerves” applied to all the

pheasant family. Mr. Smith’s observations tend to prove that this is not so,

as he states that his captive pheasants belonging to several different species

took absolutely no notice of the noises heard.


Where I live we are surrounded by lime-stone quarries and blasting goes

on every day ; these blasts are what are known locally as “ small pops,” that is

to say, small charges of powder put into large lumps of rock which have been

blown away from the rock face and which require breaking up into small handy

pieces. These explosions make a very “ sharp” noise and often six to ten go off

in very rapid succession, yet the wild pheasants and also the ducks on my big



