Birds. 9491 



this locality, I would remark that my birdstuffer, Richard Richardson, 

 had seventeen specimens sent to him for preservation during the past 

 year, 1864, and it must be borne in mind that we have very few col- 

 lectors in the town and neighbourhood, and fewer still who consider 

 the kingfisher worth thercost of stuffing. I had sent me the other day 

 the most splendid specimen of this bird I ever saw. Judging by its 

 unusually long bill and the orange-red colour of the lower mandible, 

 by the almost white paleness of the chin and cheeks (or ralher sides 

 of neck), and the pale chesnut of the breast and body, together with 

 the remarkably brilliant tone of the entire plumage, I concluded it 

 must be a very old male. To my surprise, on dissection, I found it 

 was a female, but so old that the ovary was quite shrivelled up, and 

 presenting only faint traces here and there of the positions formerly 

 occupied by the ova. I consider this to be an example, so often met 

 with amongst birds, of the female, in extreme old age, assuming more 

 or less the plumage and appearance of the male. 



Curious Variety of the Hedge Accentor (Accentor modularis). — On 

 the 21st of December last I received a curious variety of the hedge- 

 sparrow, in the flesh, from T. Kemp, gamekeeper, of Skerne, near 

 Driffield. He had shot it the day before in the immediate vicinity of 

 his own residence. It was of a rusty buff colour throughout the entire 

 plumage. Dissection proved it to be an old male. The bird was in 

 excellent feather and condition. It is rather a remarkable coincidence 

 that a specimen exactly similar in colouring was sent to me by the 

 same man, who had shot it in the same neighbourhood, and about the 

 same time, three years ago. 



Goosander (Mergus merganser). — On the 5th of January, 1865, two 

 goosanders were shot in this neighbourhood. 1 saw them both in the 

 flesh. Both were young birds of the last season : one was a male, the 

 other a female, and, as they were shot together, most probably were 

 from the same brood. A few days subsequently a young male speci- 

 men was sent to me, living and uninjured: it had been caught by a 

 little girl in a field, upon the farm of Mr. Beckett, Walton Abbey, near 

 Beverley. These birds are ungainly and awkward, both in appearance 

 and action, when out of their native element, and it would seem have 

 comparative difficulty in rising from the ground, or the girl would never 

 have captured an uninjured specimen. The situation in which the bird 

 was found — on terra firma and at some distance from water — appears 

 unusual. It is true that the River Hull and a tributary stream, Walton 

 Beck, were within easy reach, and I suppose, therefore, the bird must 

 have dropped from some cause during flight thereto, and not have 



