188 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. x. 



BUZZARDS IN BERKSHIRE. 



On August 5th, 1916, a brilliantly fine afternoon, about 

 2 p.m., I caught sight of five or six large birds soaring at a 

 great height over my house at Appleton, Berkshire. Against 

 a cloudless sky it was not easy to distinguish the wing pattern, 

 even with glasses, but their broad wings and soaring flight 

 in a series of intersecting circles without any apparent move- 

 ment of the wings, served to identify them as Buzzards {Buteo 

 bt(teo). There were six of them altogether, and they kept 

 close to one another, slowly drifting away till out of sight. 

 They had the square-cut tail characteristic of the Buzzards 

 as opposed to the Kites, and I could not see any sign of the 

 dark subterminal band so noticeable in the Rough-legged 

 Buzzard. As the Common Buzzard still nests in Hampshire 

 the}^ may have been a family party from the 'New Forest. 

 Otherwise the nearest breeding places are in Somerset, east 

 Devon and the South Wales border. F. C. R. Jourdain. 



BITTERN IN CO. TYRONE. 



A Bittern {Botaurus s. stellaris) shot near Coalisland, 

 CO. Tyrone, on December 2nd, 1916, has been sent to Messrs. 

 Sheals, the taxidermists of Belfast, for preservation. On 

 dissection it proved to be a female and it should be noted that 

 the feathers of the head and neck were in a state of moult. 

 The ovaries of the bird were in a diseased state and the 

 stomach contained a perch nine inches long. 



Wm. C. Wright. 



SHAG INLAND IN SOMERSET. 



On the afternoon of November 9th, 1916, a Shag {Phala- 

 crocorax g. gractdus) was shot at Winscombe in Somerset by 

 Mr. T. Vowles, as it was sitting on the ridge of the roof of his 

 house. I had the opportunity of examining the bird in the 

 flesh, and it proved to be a young bird of the year in good 

 plumage and condition. Winscombe, I may say, is about 

 seven and a half miles in a direct line from the nearest point 

 of the Bristol Channel in an easterly direction. Although 

 this bird has been occasionally reported at much greater 

 distances from the sea than this, its occurrence anywhere 

 inland is of suflicient rarity to be worth recording. But in 

 addition to this as a Somersetshire bird the Shag was unknown 

 up to 1893, when the Rev. Murray Mathew pubhshed his 

 " Revised List of the Birds of Somerset " (Som.. Arch, ct? Nat. 

 Hist.Soc. Proc, Vol. XXXIX). It was added in the following 



