SMALL BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 75 
very healthy and there were generally a few dead bees 
lying around, as well as some sickly ones creeping about 
below the alighting board. At first the bird confined itself 
to those, carrying them off, dead and dying indifferently, to 
its nest at the rate of about one in three minutes for 
perhaps half an hour each morning. I did not interfere, 
as I thought it was probably doing no harm by removing 
weakly insects; but as those became exhausted the bird 
had to be frightened off (no easy job!) as it then attacked 
the healthy bees, deliberately waiting on the alighting board 
till one appeared, and then as deliberately picking it up. 
Observations of this kind have frequently been made before 
(see my BLzrds of Northumberland and the Eastern Borders, 
pp. 78 and 119), but I was interested in this case to note 
the procedure. Each bee, dead as well as living, was 
carried a yard or two to a path, on whose hard surface it 
was transferred from bill to foot. A quick twist or two 
then sufficed to sever the abdomen from the hard thorax 
the latter being left on the path and only the softer body 
being carried away to the nest—sting and all, I presume. The 
nest was situated a couple of hundred yards away and 
contained at the time half-grown young. The pathway 
soon became littered with disbodied bees, some of which 
when examined were still alive and making tottering 
endeavours to crawl away. 
Tree-creepers on the Isle of May.—Little is known of 
the movements of our British Tree-creeper (Certhia familiarts 
brittanica); it may therefore be of interest to record that two 
occurred on the Isle of May in autumn 1920. The first of these, 
a male, appeared on the 26th September (light west wind) ; it was 
seen on the face of the cliffs and the wall of the garden. The 
other, a female, in body moult, was killed at the lantern at 
I A.M. on 21st October (calm). As we had not sufficient material 
with which to compare them, we sent them to the British Museum, 
and Mr N. B. Kinnear kindly informs us that they both belong 
to the British sub-species. This is the first time the bird has been 
seen on the Isle of May, though of course it breeds on the 
mainland on both sides of the Firth of Forth LEoNnora JEFFREY 
RINTOUL and EvELyn V. BaAxTEr. 
