OTCS 



REMARKABLE TAMENESS IN A REDWING. 

 I AM indebted to Mr. E. W. Bawcock, schoolmaster, of Weni, 

 Shropshire, for the following interesting note. He writes : 

 " On New Year's Day, 1914, a friend asked me to identify 

 a bird which had surprised him by its tameness. The bird 

 was a Redwing, and was in close attendance on a man who 

 was opening out heaps of sods in a recently flayed field near 

 Tille}^ Wem. For a fortnight the bird had met the man 

 on coming to work at dawn, and had left him before dark 

 quite regularly. It apparently knew no fear, and worked 

 its way daily through a banquet of creeping things revealed 

 on opening up the sod heaps. Often enough it was within a 

 foot of the man working, and the approach of two strangers 

 (my friend and myself) made no difference in this respect — 

 indeed on leaving the field the bird followed me up to the 

 main road, quite 150 yards. The weather was somewhat 

 severe, but this would not altogether account for the extra- 

 ordinary tameness of a bird usually somewhat shy. It 

 showed none of the fluttering uncertainty which usually 

 characterizes birds even in hard weather. I can only liken 

 its tameness to that of a barn-door fowl, and this tameness 

 was so surprising that one can only suppose that, as a young 

 bird, it had been petted by some human of the Norwegian 

 forests." H. E. Forrest. 



ROUGH-LEGGED BUZZARD AND GADWALLS 

 IN BERKSHIRE. 

 I AM indebted to Mr. Topp, Taxidermist of Reading, for the 

 following notes : — 



A young female Rough-legged Buzzard (Buteo I. lagopus) 

 was caught in a rabbit-trap at Moulsford on November 22nd 

 or 23rd, 1914. The only other records I have for the count}^ 

 are two killed and one seen. 



A pair of Gadwall (Anas strepera) were shot at Maiden 

 Erleigh on January 6th, 1915, another bird being seen at 

 the same time. As far as I am aware this is the first recorded 

 occurrence of Gadwall in Berkshire. Heatley Noble. 



[In addition to the records of the Rough-legged Buzzard 

 referred to by Mr. Noble, Mr. N. H. Joy has also recorded 

 this species as seen at Bradfield on October 19th, 1908, 

 probably on July 27th, 1908, and at Beenham, near Reading, 

 August 1st, 1900 {Br. B., IV., p. 123).— F.C.R.J.] 



