9626 Birds. 



moutb of the pot being turned towards a large gorse-bush, a sheltered entrance was 

 secured, and in the opposite hole a capital eyelet for all approaching intruders during 

 incubation. — H. Ecroyd Smith. 



Early Nesting of the Longinilcd Tit. — Although known as a resident in some of our 

 more sheltered woods, ibis species is but seldom seen, and the nest has very rarely been 

 taken in this marine locality. I was consequently agreeably surprised, after so severe 

 and late a winter as we have experienced, to find, on ihe 2nd of April, the exquisite- 

 architectural curiosity, of which 1 herewith enclose a photograph. This nest was seen 

 fully a dozen yards from the bush of mingled wild briar and whitethorn in which it 

 was placed, not a single spray of which could be said to be in leaf, as the buds were 

 only bursting, and of the branchlets encompassed by the structure several proved to be 

 dead, thus rendering it still more diflicult (from breakage) to retain the nest with its 

 original surroundings, meagre as these were. The nest you have selected as a frontis- 

 piece to 'Birdsnesting' will not bear comparison for an instant with this one, either in 

 contour, material, or general beauty, the gray lichens in their crisp prominence adding 

 strikingly to their effect. To count the eggs it was necessary to turn the nest, when 

 carefully cut from the bush, completely upside down, and then allow them to work 

 gently out of the aperture into the hand ; otherwise the entrance, only the size of a 

 half-grown mouse, would have been strained out of shape. The eggs proved a fiir 

 average number, viz. nine; and mention should also be made that the bush in which 

 the nest lay stands close to an open foot-path, thus rendering the little domicile still 

 more a mark for observation. — Id. 



A Ruok's Nest on the Ground. — A curious case has come within my knowledge, of 

 which the following are particulars: —This season a pair of rooks nested on the ground, 

 in a meadow on Oakenclough Farm, in the occupation of Mr. Shirley, near to Longner, 

 North Staffordshire. After depositing her eggs the hen sat closely on them up to 

 Monday, the )5th inst. ; but about that period rain fell heavily and flooded the part of 

 the meadow where the nest was situated, thereby causing the rook to temporarily for- 

 sake it. When the flood subsided, she again commenced sitting on her eggs; but of 

 course they then came to nothing, as they had become rotten in the interval. — James 

 Turner, in the ' Field' of May 26, 1865. 



A Rook Fishing. — As I was sculling on the river at Oxford, yesterday, I observed 

 a somewhat singular occurrence in Natural History. I saw a rook, hovering some 

 distance above the water, suddenly swoop down like an osprey, and emerge from the 

 river with a small fish in his claws, and fly away with it. I am sure the bird was a 

 rook, and not a carrion crow. Have any of your readers seen or heard of rooks 

 catching fish ?—From the ' Field ' of May 26, 1 865. 



The Great Slack iVnoilpecher. — Mr. Stevenson, with that laudable love of truth 

 which characterizes all that he has published, has entirely demolished (Zool. 9249) the 

 "two examples of the great black woodpecker killed in a small wood near Scole Inn, 

 in Norfolk." They were the large spotted woodpecker, as the shooter of them slates 

 his belief. Lord Derby's specimen thus becomes the only undoubtedly British-killed 

 example of the species. It is therefore very desirable to test the authority on which 

 this specimen is retained. For this purpose I refer to Dr. Collingwood's ' Historical 

 Fauna of Lancashire and Cheshire,' and find, at page 16, the following passage: — 

 " Another and much rarer woodpecker is the great black woodpecker {Picas marlius), 

 concerning which not a little doubt has been experienced as to its ever having been 

 met with in this country. Montagu, in his 'Supplement to the Ornithological 



