136 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 



A great ash-colour od* butcher-bird was shot last winter in 

 Tisted Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne. 

 They are rarts aves in this country. 



Crows f go in pairs the whole year round. 



Cornish choughs J abound, and breed on Beechy Head, and 

 on all the cliffs of the Sussex coast. 



The common wild pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of 

 passage in the south of England, seldom appearing till towards 

 the end of November ; || is usually the latest winter bird of 

 passage. Before our beechen woods were so much destroyed, 

 we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile toge- 

 ther, as they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us 

 early in spring : where do they breed ? 



The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird H" 

 the storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring, in blowing, 



after carrying a short distance, he probably drops, or yields up to the 

 bald eagle, (J'alco leucocephalus,) and again ascends by easy spiral circles, 

 to the higher regions of the air, where he glides about in all the ease and 

 majesty of his species. At once, from this sublime aerial height, he 

 descends like a perpendicular torrent, plunging into the sea with a loud 

 rushing sound, and with the certainty of a rifle. In a few moments, he 

 emerges, bearing in his claws his struggling prey, which he always carries 

 head foremost ; and, having risen a few feet above the surface, shakes 

 himself as a water spaniel would do, and directs his heavy and laborious 

 course straightway to the land." 



Mr Lloyd mentions, that in Sweden, the eagle sometimes strikes so 

 large a pike, and so firmly do his talons hold their grasp, that he is carried 

 under water by the superior gravity of the pike, and drowned. Dr 

 Mullenbog says, he himself saw an enormous pike with an eagle fixed to 

 its back by his talons, lying dead on a piece of ground which had been 

 overflowed by a river, and from which the water had subsided. 



This naturalist also gives an account of a conflict between an eagle and 

 a pike, which a gentleman saw on the river Gotha, near Wenersborg. In 

 this case, when the eagle first seized the pike, he soared a short distance 

 into the air, but the weight and struggling of the fish together, soon 

 obliged the eagle to descend. Both fell into the water and disappeared. 

 Presently, however, the eagle again came to the surface, uttering the 

 most piercing cries, and making apparently every endeavour to extricate 

 his talons, but in vain ; and, after a violent struggle, was carried under 

 water. 



Montagu tell us, an osprey was seen to stoop and carry off a half-grown 

 duck from the surface of the water, at Slapton Ley. In the struggle, the 

 duck fell from the talons of the eagle, but was recovered before it reached 

 the water. ED. 



* British Zoology, vol. i. p. 16 J. f Ibid. p. 167. 



J Ibid. p. 198. Ibid, p. 216. 



|| See our note, p. 112 ED. 



f British Zoology, vol. i. p. 224. 



