148 THE BIEDS OF OXFORDSHIRE. 



peculiar * humming ' sound with their wings. The earher 

 clutches of eggs, when laid on the arable fields^ are liable to be 

 destroyed by farming operations^ in which ease eggs are some- 

 times laid very late in the season. In 1880, I found two 

 newly-hatched young as late as the 1 1 th July, by which date 

 the earlier young are on the wing. As a breeding species the 

 Peewit is less numerous than in former years. Mr. Arnatt 

 tells me that many years ago, when the drags were being taken 

 over one of his fields at Stanton Harcourt late in spring, no 

 less than fifty nests were found in the thirty acres. 



At the close of summer the broods gather together into 

 flocks, feeding on the fallows and in meadows, and later in the 

 autumn are joined by migratory bauds, the flocks or ' con- 

 gregations,^ to use the old term, being then often of very 

 considerable size. At the end of September, 1885, 1 observed 

 a flock in the valley, near Adderbury, which must have 

 nrunbered twelve or fifteen hundred birds. In varying and 

 smaller numbers the flocks remain during the winter in the 

 milder seasons only, disappearing entirely in severe weather, 

 and return mg usually within a few days of the breaking up of 

 the frost. In some districts, especially the drier portions of 

 the county, they never stay the winter ; this is the case in the 

 Chiltern district, where they were observed to reappear about 

 the end of February (B. D'Oyly Aplin). 



It does not seem to have been generally noticed that the 

 colom- of the Lapwing^s legs varies in summer and winter. 

 One killed on the 17th June had the legs and feet bright 

 coral red ; in an adult shot on the 24th December these parts 

 were dark purplish-brown, and rather paler in a young bird of 

 the year procured at the same time. 



THE TURNSTOWE. 



Strepsilas interpres. 

 The Turnstone, a casual wanderer from the coast, has been 

 procured twice close to Banbury, namely in i860, and in 



