THE BIRDS OF DEVONSHIRE. 135 



report from this locality, " Hundreds of Sea-pies 

 visit the mussel-beds all the year with Curlews, 

 Gulls and Stints" (Migration Report, 1881, p. 71). 



Family Scolopacid^. 

 KVOG^IY.—Recurvirostra avocetta, Linn. 

 A EARE visitant, obtained on our estuaries at long 

 intervals. Mr. Ross records that a party of six 

 Avocets visited the Exe in November, 1837, and 

 Mr. D' Urban reports a bird shot on the mud flats 

 opposite the town of Topsham in 1855. There 

 are two specimens in the Exeter Museum, one 

 procured at Dawlish Warren in December 1844, 

 and the other shot on the Exe, March, 1867. A 

 male and two female birds were shot on the Kings- 

 bridge estuary in October 1880, one of them falling 

 to the gun of Dr. Elliot, who had previously studied 

 its movements through a telescope. He saw it 

 feeding " In an easy and graceful manner, with 

 rather slow and measured strides, and passing its 

 head from side to side, scooping up the mud and 

 swallowing what it had taken." An Avocet was 

 killed on the Taw near Barnstaple, in November, 

 1888, and my own collection contains two specimens 

 killed at Exmouth, in the same month and year. 



BLACK-WINGED ^TILT.—Himantopus candidus, Bonnat. 

 A RARE visitant. Dr. Moore writes '' Mr. Comyns 

 has a specimen killed in Devon ; and Mr. Gosling 

 informs me of another, shot on Slapton Ley " (Mag. 

 Nat. Hist. 1837, p. 323). 



