Mr. J. Blackwall’s Ornithological Notes. 25 
his ‘ History of British Birds,’ and the cause of this occurrence 
is conjectured to be the desire to rub itself in the dust, like the 
Galline. That such may be the case [ will not dispute, but I 
have never been able to detect the bird in the fact, though I have 
watched it on such occasions with the closest attention, and I 
have known it, in numerous instances, alight on a damp road 
or a compact gravel-walk, where there was no dust, and after 
having been repeatedly disturbed return to it again. 
It is probable that the circumstance of nestling goatsuckers 
having been mistaken for young euckoos by unskilful ornitho- 
logists may have contributed in a considerable degree to promote 
the erroneous opinion that the cuckoo sometimes takes charge 
of its own offspring; the two species, however, may readily be 
distinguished from each other, even when recently disengaged 
from the egg, by the structure of the beak and feet. 
With reference to its ordinary call, usually consisting of two 
prolonged tremulous notes, the latter of which is the lower, the 
Welsh have named this species ¢roel/wr or the spinner. 
The Ring Dove, Columba palumbus. 
In seasons when acorns are unusally abundant, the oak woods 
in the valley of the Conway are resorted to by large flocks of 
ring doves, comprising a very much greater number of indivi- 
duals than have been bred in the neighbourhood, evidently at- 
tracted to the locality by the plentiful “supply of food to be ob- 
tained in it. Whence they come, and by what means they 
acquire a knowledge of the fact that induces them to visit the 
district, I am at a loss to conjecture, as they do not assemble 
gradually, but arrive in large bodies almost simultaneously. 
The autumn of 1844 was a remarkably favourable season for 
the production of acorns, and ring doves were proportionately 
numerous. In the winter, the-birds procured them by turning 
over the fallen leaves nde which they lay hid; and some idea 
may be formed of the immense consumption of nutriment of this 
kind by the doves, from the circumstance that on opening the 
craw of a specimen brought to me on the 26th of January 1845, 
it was found to contain forty-five acorns of various sizes. 
The Common Sandpiper, Totanus hypoleucos. 
Sandpipers of several species, more especially the common 
one, are prevented from increasing so rapidly as they otherwise 
would in the county of Caernarvonshire, where numerous streams 
and lakes constitute favourite resorts of those birds, by the 
shepherds’ dogs, which habitually prowl about their haunts in 
quest of their nests, and devour indiscriminately both eggs and 
young. 
