Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 143 



and were fascinated by its interesting ways, probably never 

 observed in England by ornithologists before, for this grand 

 bird was a Macqueen's Bustard, and only the third example 

 which has visited our shores. Meanwhile two men had come 

 on the scene with guns, and after a little manoeuvring 

 George Edwin Chubbley shot the bird as his brother, Craggs 

 Chubbley, put it over to him. Whilst being followed it never 

 seemed flurried. When flying, the wings of the bird were a 

 striking black and white. The long black tufts on the sides 

 of the neck appeared as black streaks at a distance, and were 

 very conspicuous as the bird stood in the field. 



" Macqueen's Bustard is a desert-loving species, inhabiting 

 the steppes of Asia, and why it visits us at all is merely a 

 matter of conjecture, but probably certain young birds 

 wander far from their course and thus manage to reach our 

 coast. When the feathers of the bird were turned up we 

 found them to be of a delicate blush pink at the base, con- 

 trasting beautifully with the speckled sandy colour of the 

 bird's back. The beak is brownish black, the legs and feet 

 light straw-colour, and the eyes very pale straw and very 

 bright. The length from beak to tail is 28| inches, the 

 tarsus 4^ inches, and the flexure 16 inches. The bird was a 

 young male, and its stomach contained vegetable matter and 

 three beetles.^^ 



At the Meeting of the Zoological Society of London on 

 December Ist, 1896, Mr. H. E. Dresser exhibited and made 

 remarks on a specimen of Pallas^s Willow- Warbler {Phyl- 

 hscopus proregulus) , shot at Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, on 

 the 31st October, 1896, being the first instance of the 

 occurrence of this bird in Great Britain. 



Parasitism of Cassidix oryzivora. — The last number of 

 ' Timehri ' (vol. x. new ser. p. 37) contained an article by 

 Mr. C. A. Lloyd on " Queer Homes,'^ from which we extract 

 the following remarks on the breeding-habits of Cassidix 

 oryzivora [cf. Ibis, 1896, p. 585) : — 



" A cabbage-palm that 1 once saw was decorated in a most 

 singular manner with the nests of the Black Bunyah [Ostinops 



