OTES 



STAINED EGGS OF THE GREAT TIT. 



I HAVE received from the Rev. N. W. Paine an egg of a Great 

 Tit (Panis m. newtoni), stained black all over. Mr. Paine 

 informs me that the nest, found at Great Melton Rectory, 

 Norfolk, was built in a cup-shaped fork of a tree open to the 

 sky. There were eight eggs in it and these were all coated 

 with some black substance like the one he forwarded to me. 

 The nest was very liable to be flooded owing to its position, 

 and later, after heavy rain, the remaining eggs were Avashed 

 almost clean. The bird subsequently deserted. 



J. H. GURNEY. 



I have examined microscopically the substance coating 

 one of these eggs and have little doubt that it is foecal matter. 

 It covers the egg imiformly, being nowhere thicker in one 

 place than in another, is of a brownish-black colour and of 

 the consistency of tar. Dissection of the parent bird might 

 have shown some structural abnormality in the oviduct or 

 cloaca and possibly explained the occurrence. M. D. Hill. 



PIED FLYCATCHER IN SOMERSET. ^ 



On April 2'ith, 1916, 1 saw a male Pied Flycatcher {Muscicajm 

 h. hypoleuca) near Porlock, Somerset. I passed the same spot 

 later in the day and again on the 25th and 28th, but did 

 not see it, so the bird was probably a passing migrant. The 

 Pied Flycatcher is rare in Somerset. C. Smith {Birds of 

 Somerset, 1869) mentions one bird '' apparently a male " near 

 Taunton " some years ago." In some privately published 

 notes of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural 

 History Society, covering the period 1865 to 1913, by 

 James Turner, two males in April, 1891, at Bagworth, near 

 Axbridge, and one male in the third week of April, 1901, near 

 Milverton, are recorded. In the same notes it is stated that 

 the bird has bred in Devon within one mile of the Somerset 

 countj^ boundary. E. W. Hendy. 



[Migrants are recorded from Somersetshire in April or 

 May, 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1913, in the B.O.C. Migration 

 Reports, so that the bird is probably a fairly regular migrant 

 to the county. It has also been recoided from Wells in 1870 

 (Zool. 1871, p. 2439), at Weston, April 27, 1900 {Zool. 1900, 

 p. 237) and one was seen late in May on the Somerset Moors 



