268 FIRST APPEARANCES OF BIRDS, INSECTS, ETC. 

 GENERAL NOTES. 



Fox-CuBS out and running about in a cover on the Marsh- 

 wood Estate in the Cotley country in February. This is an 

 early record (E. S. R.). 



SQUIRREL EATING EGGS. On May i5th I watched a squirrel 

 eating eggs from a chaffinch's nest quite close (J. R.). 



PIED WAGTAIL CUTTING OFF FLY'S WINGS. On July nth, 

 1904, a Wagtail was collecting insects on my lawn and taking 

 them to its young. Wishing to see its method of manipulation, 

 I killed a bluebottle fly and placed it in a sitting attitude in a 

 spot where the bird was likely to come. It returned to the lawn 

 for more food, and soon saw the bluebottle at about a yard off, 

 which it seized with a sudden rush. It then stopped at about 

 six inches from the spot where the insect was placed and 

 manipulated it in some way with its beak, but so quickly that I 

 could not see exactly what it was doing. However, on going up 

 after the bird had flown away to its nest, I found the two wings 

 of the bluebottle neatly cut off at the base. I could find no 

 trace of the legs, so that these were probably untouched. It 

 seems as if this were the usual way in which not only birds, but 

 also wasps, treat their prey when it consists of winged insects 

 and when they have to carry them for any distance, as Mrs. 

 Richardson has seen wasps thus engaged. It would be interest- 

 ing to notice whether they always cut off the wings before eating 

 insects when they are consumed on the spot. In bats it is, of 

 course, a well-known habit, and one finds quantities of moths' 

 wings (not any legs, however), in any place they frequent, such 

 as the covered porch at the entrance of my house (N. M. R.;. 



SPARROWS DESTRUCTIVE TO WALLFLOWER BLOOM. In the 

 spring my beds of wallflowers suffered greatly from the constant 

 attacks of flocks of house-sparrows, which ripped up large 

 numbers of unopened flower-beds and devoured their contents, 

 together with parts of some of the petals themselves (E. R. B.). 



PLAGUE OF SNAILS. As 1903 will ever be memorable for the 

 prodigious numbers of the common garden slug (Agriolomax 



