The Zoologist— May, 1866. 217 



during the last fortnight. These birds bore deep for their food, after 

 the manner of curlew and whimbrel, phinging their bill into the soft 

 ooze lip to the forehead. I have never shot the black-tailed species 

 on the flats, although it probably occasionally visits the Humber 

 during the period of the spring and autumn migrations. Two years 

 since, in May, while watching through a telescope a small flock of 

 godwits, I observed amongst them one the whole of whose under parts, 

 except the belly, were a dark chestnut colour. 



Blackheaded Gulls. — Have seen several of these gulls about the 

 marsh district during the last winter. As far as my observations go, 

 they appear to be the first of our shore birds which assume the dis- 

 tinctive summer dress : during the last week in February I observed 

 one which had then nearly acquired the brown summer head- 

 dress. 



Pied Wagtails. — There was a considerable accession to the number 

 of pied wagtails in this neighbourhood on or about the 28th of this 



month. 



John Cordeaux. 

 Great Cotes, Uleeby, Lincolnshire, 

 March 31, 1866. 



Ornithological Notes from the Isle of Wight. 

 By Captain Henry Hadfield. 



(Continued from S. S. 178). 



March, 1866. 



Spotted Woodpecker, dc. — I have lately heard of a spotted wood- 

 pecker {Picus major) having been met with ia the island fifty years 

 ago. My informant, Mr. J. Nobbs, a gunraaker, of Newport (well 

 known to me), in replying to my queries, says, " On the 2nd of May, 

 1815, wandering over St. George's Down, towards Rowlands,*! seated 

 myself under a lofty tree : the hawthorn was blooming, and I had 

 begun to muse on the beauties of the scene, when presently a tapping 

 sound was heard, and on looking up I observed, some fifteen yards away, 

 a spotted woodpecker settled on the trunk of an old but stunted tree. 

 The tapping would cease for a time, when the bird with head erect 

 watchfully sat poised on its* out-spread tail, then, resuming its spiral 

 ascent, would expertly extract from the decaying bark its insect food." 

 This woodpecker, as well as those previously referred to, were found 



SECOND series — VOL. I. 2 F 



