WASTE GROUND AND SUBURBAN BIRD-LIFE. 1 27 



rapidity with which the black head is assumed in early spring. 

 An instance is cited in Yarrell's British Birds in which the change 

 from white to dark-brown was completed in five days. This, I 

 think, cannot be exceptional. In our district the change in the 

 great numbers of gulls which are to be seen everywhere seems to 

 be completed within a fortnight — from the 15th of February till 

 the end of that month. By the latter date black heads are the 

 rule, and as the change is to be seen in all degrees of advance- 

 ment during that period the likelihood seems to be that five or six 

 days must suffice in most cases for its completion. 



The foregoing list embraces forty-nine species, of which forty- 

 five have come under my observation within the past five years in 

 a small area within the present boundaries of the city. When I 

 look back a quarter of a century on the appearance which the 

 locality described presented then, and consider the vast change 

 which has gone on in that period, I cannot resist the conclusion 

 that another such period of expansion will make it impossible to 

 compile such a list again. In that fact lies any interest that may 

 attach to the paper. It may be something to reflect that in the 

 last decade of the present century we had not in this populous 

 neighbourhood lost sight of that "bright finch," the goldie; that 

 the cuckoo's call and the land rail's " crake " were not then 

 unknown ; and that even by our turbid watercourses and clay pits 

 the kingfisher darting like "a blue arrow" was not an unfamiliar 

 sight to such as then took delight in the pursuit of natural 

 history. 



