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partiality for ants and their eggs, the specimens shot about here 
invariably showing by their bills, that they had been engaged 
among the ants. The Great Spotted Woodpecker is decidedly a rare 
Kent bid; the Wryneck is one of our common summer visitors, 
reaching us in March and April; it is partial to old pollard, willow, 
and ash trees, which abound in my neighbourhood, its note is 
peculiar, like the sound of sharpening a saw with a file. 
FAMILY COLUMBIDA.—(page 112.) 
We have all the British representatives of the family except 
the Rock Dove. The Ring Dove, Columba Palumbus, is here called 
the Wood Pigeon, and has increased of late. The Stock Dove is not 
nearly socommon. The Turtle Dove, very numerous, frequenting 
the seed turnip fields, and pea fields in great numbers. 
A NEARLY ALLIED FAMILY, THE PTEROCLIDZ. 
(Page 112.) 
The Pallas’s Sand Grouse, one of our remarkable Visitors, has 
come over in considerable numbers to Britain during the last 
two years; although but a few of them have been met with in 
Kent, in other parts they have bred, and been rigidly protected ; 
they appeared in Kent in 1859, 1863, and again in 1888. 
THE ORDER GALLINA.—(page 112.) 
We have one specimen only recorded of the Red Grouse, which 
must have been quite an accidental visitor. The Common Pheasant 
and the ringed variety among the preserved lands. 
The Red-legged Partridge has very much increased in East 
Kent of late ; it is detested by the sportsman, as it keeps running, 
seldom getting up within shot, spoiling the dogs and the sportsman’s 
temper. J can remember the time when it was never met with in 
this or the adjoining parishes. It goes also by the name of the 
French Partridge, and the notion that it occasionally crosses over 
from France, is strengthened from the following circumstance. On 
the 13th of November, 1884, Gisby (an old boatman and sportsman, 
of Ramsgate) informed my friend, the late Mr. Hillier, that he, Gisby, 
while out in his boat, saw 22 Partridges, which flew so near him that 
he could sce they were red-legged, coming over the water from the 
French coast, and seemed very tired. I also remember meeting 
a number of these birds about this neighbourhood, when they had 
not been known or seen about, earlier in the season, this being in 
October, and they were so tired that they were easily hunted down. 
The Common Quail is exceedingly irregular in its visits to 
Kent, and is never met with in any great numbers, some years it is 
entirely absent, 
