39 



MANX ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES, 1920. 



BY 



P. G. RALFE. 



The following notes are intended to continue the recordi 

 from the article in British Birds, XIV., p. ii. 



Information as to the presence in summer of small migrant: 

 species is still very imperfect. It is to be feared that the 

 extensive destruction of our plantations during the war' 

 period will have its influence on the occurrence of such birds. 



The question of the forms of some of the commoner British- 

 species occurring in Man is also of interest. I am not 

 aware that a single preserved specimen of a Manx Coal- 

 Tit {Pants ater) exists, and I failed during 1920 to see any 

 living birds at close quarters. (The species is quite scarce, 

 apparently, in the Island.) Several of my friends, however, 

 think that the cheek and neck-patches of the Manx birds- 

 are unmistakably white. Manx specimens of the Dipper" 

 also await critical examination. 



The Greenland Wheatear {CEnanthe oe. leucorrhoa) certainly 

 occurs in numbers on migration, as well as the typical form.. 



Ghough (P. pyrrhocorax) . — During the year I have had opportunity 

 to visit several nesting sites of former years. In May Mr. T. H. Grave? 

 and I saw a pair apparently occupying the nest in the mine building 

 figured in British Birds (IX., p. 291), but there were no eggs laid 

 in the cavity, which was lined just as in 191 5. On another visit 

 (June 15th) a new nest seemed to have been made on the top of a 

 high ruinous wall of a much larger building in the same group. The- 

 situation which, strange to say, was quite open to the sky, was in- 

 accessible by any means at my disposal. 



The nest in the mine fissure on the coast {British Birds, V., p. 301) 

 contained young on May 19th and June 5th, easily seen, but verjr 

 difficult of approach. 



The site illustrated in Birds of the Isle of Man, p. 84 (a hole in a 

 perpendicular cliff at the summit of brows rising from a strand) was" 

 also occupied. On Maj' 24th it contained a large young bird and an^ 

 addled egg. 



On September i ith I visited the locality in an inland glen {t.c, p. 90).. 

 Here a considerable part of the old building containing the nesting- 

 hole had fallen, but the wall with the immediate site was still intact, 

 and the hole had been recently used ; whereas in 1905 the nest 

 structure was barely visible outside the joist-hole, a mass of gorse- 

 sticks now projected from it, forming a very conspicuous rim. 



White Wagtail [Motacilla a. alba). — Great numbers of Wagtails- 

 were passing at Ramsey in the late summer (probably mostly, if not all, 

 of this race). 



Yellow Wagtail (Af. /. rayi). — On October 4th I saw at least 

 two feeding with Rock- and Meadow-Pipits, and many young Pied 

 (possibly also some White) Wagtails, amid the cast-up weed on the- 



