9716 Birds. 



collection. No. 3 I saw in the flesh on the 3rd of November, 1862 ; this 

 bird had only a small patch of red, scarcely an inch in diameter, 

 which, as well as the gray or slaty plumage, was much intermingled 

 with white feathers. In the Chichester Museum I find another speci- 

 men in summer plumage, excepting some white feathers about the 

 base of the bill ; this bird, a female, was obtained at West Wittering 

 on the 1st of November, 1862. Judging from these four examples, it 

 would appear that if adult birds do lose the red patch in winter, — and 

 this can scarcely be doubted after i-eading Mr. Blake-Knox's article 

 (Zool. 9610), — the moult is commenced about the latter part of October, 

 and that the summer plumage is fully regained by the first week in the 

 following May, or perhaps earlier, thus giving a period of six months 

 for the two moults. Is it not probable that the second change is 

 merely a change of colour and not a moult? 



Great Northern and Blackthroated Divers. — In answer to Mr. 

 Blake-Knox's question (Zool. 9611), " Did any reader of the ' Zoolo- 

 gist' ever shoot a sumu)er-plumaged bird in winter?" the adult female 

 great northern diver recorded in the 'Zoologist' (Zool, 9449), — killed 

 on the 6lii of December, 1864, — was in perfect summer plumage, with 

 this exception, nearly all the black at the upper part of the neck was 

 much intermingled with white, giving it a gray appearance, the throat 

 being almost white, and shading off to black near the rings which 

 encircle the neck. There is also in the Chichester Museum an adult 

 female blackthroated diver in about the same state of plumage ; this 

 specimen was obtained in the canal basin at Chichester, in December, 

 1836. 



June, 1865. 



Swift. — On the 11th I saw about thirty swifts, and on the 25th 

 counted more than flity, at about eight o'clock in the evening, flying 

 from east to west, in scattered parties of from half a dozen to twenty. 

 1 should imagine that tliere are at least twenty to thirty pairs breeding 

 in the tower of Boshara Church this year, and the greater part of these 

 have nests in such inaccessible places that they are not likely to be 

 disturbed. 



Little Stint. — I had two of these birds, male and female, sent from 

 Paghani Harbour on the 16lh of June, and I am told on good authority 

 that a flock of about forty was seen at a large sheet of water near 

 Chichester, where ballast has been dug by the South-Coast Railway 

 Company, and now known as the " ballast hole." Two of these birds 

 were shut on the 14th of June. 



