AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 253 



108. ROLLER. 



Coracias garrulus. 



My reason for including this fine species amongst 

 the birds of Northamptonshire is the fact that on my 

 return to Lilford from Scotland, in September 1859, 

 I was assured by two of my sisters that they had 

 seen and watched for some time from their windows 

 a very brightly-plumaged bird, which was quite 

 unknown to them, in a large beech tree close to the 

 house ; I suggested Jay, Green Woodpecker, King- 

 fisher, an escaped Parrot, and other more improbable 

 birds than these, but all these suggestions were 

 received with scorn, and one of my sisters aforesaid, 

 on seeing long afterwards the plate of the Roller in 

 Gould's ' Birds of Great Britain,' exclaimed at once, 

 without any question from me, "Why that is the 

 bird we saw in the old beech tree ! " She assured 

 me she had no doubt whatever on the subject, and 

 her decision was subsequently confirmed without 

 hesitation by the other sister who had seen the bird. 

 This evidence is perfectly satisfactory to my own 

 mind, for I cannot conceive the possibility of any 

 other British bird being mistaken for a Roller at 

 such a short distance as the above bird was from its 

 admirers, and although the Roller has been but 

 seldom met with in England at any very great dis- 

 tance from the coasts, where it generally meets its 

 fate, it has been shot in Cambridgeshire and Hert- 

 fordshire, and is by no means one of the most rare 

 of our continental visitors. Our own principal 

 acquaintance with this species has been in Spain, 

 Turkey, and Algeria, in all of which countries it is 



