188 Thk Zoologist — April, 1866. 



being ihe second laying, still I managed to secure a few very handsome 

 varieties. The proprietor protects these birds strictly, and does not 

 like the nests robbed at all. In one clutch wefe two of the Sandwich 

 and one of another tern together; of the common or arctic there were 

 a good many nests. Captain Patterson was getting impatient, as there 

 was a nasty sea rising, so we cut short onr visit to the other Noxies, 

 and steered for land with our spoils. 



This concluded a very pleasant fortnight's bird's-nesting, the only 

 drawback to which was my want of success with respect to the roseate 

 tern. 



HoVtARD SAUNDliRS. 

 Oakfield, Reigate, Marcli, 1866. 



Nesting of the Lesser Red pole and Blackbird at Dalkey. — The lesser redpole nested 

 this year again in the same shrubbery as last year; but uiiforiiinatily the live eggs 

 were plundered before coining to maturity. The nesl was in a larch tree, and com- 

 posed of twigs and roots, lined with hair, down, and the rough half-woody bud-cases of 

 the beech. It is believed by many ihat thr blackbird will not nesl near the sea: in 

 the same shrubbery, not one hundred yards from the sea, blackbirds always build and 

 rear their young, together with greenfinches, thrushes, roMns, blue tits, wrens, hedge- 

 sparrows, missel thrushes, redpoles and linnets; and thai ihey sing near the sea I Can 

 bear ample testimony. — Harry Blake-Knox ; Uleerlmi Place, Dalkey, July, 186.5. 



Cuckoo denuded of Feathers. — In his 'Introduction to British Birds,' Bewick 

 menlions, as if a proved fact, a cuckoo having been discovered denuded of feathers, 

 kept alive during the winter and escaping in spring. A respectalde labouring yeoman 

 told me the same fact as having occurred to him, without knowing anything of Bewick, 

 or hearing from me of it. I, in consequence, asked the clernymau of his parish to 

 make inquiry, and received an apparently true deposition of two or three different 

 cases in the same district. To account f(U' what I must suppose such self-delusion 

 appears impossible. The distance from the time of Bewick's event, and the present, 

 and my not having met with any similar reconi elsewhere, adds to the singularity of 

 the idea, or whatever the truih really is. I have prefaced my " depositions" with the 

 extract from Bewick, pro forma. I do not give you nay friend the Rector's name, &c., 

 as he might be troubled with a correspondence, which I know would annoy. Dr. Col- 

 liugwood, of Liverpool, to whom I sent the p^irtitulars, writes, "The legend is so cir- 

 cumstantially detailed and new to me: I had never met witli anything similar, and 

 can scarce give a guess at the explanation of them, beyond the love of the marvellous 

 which is so usual a concomitant of ignorance. The stories are, however, intierestiug 

 and curious." (August, 1862). 



Bewick, 1797 (' Introduction,' p. xvii.). — "That other birds have been found in a 

 torpid state may be inferred from the following curious f.ict, which was communicated 

 to us by a gentleman who saw the bird, and had the account from the person who 

 found it. A few years ago a young cuckoo was found in the thickest part uf a close 



