The Zoologist — April, 1867. 691 



of the swedes and common turnips; they appear, however, to give a 

 decided preference to the latter plant. In two contiguous fields in 

 this parish, the one swedes, the other the common white-globe turnip, 

 they invariably congregated in much greater uumbers on the white 

 turnips, to the comparative neglect of the swedes. They also drilled 

 holes with their bills into the bulbs of the swedes, which is surprising, 

 considering the turnips are frozen as hard as stones : they thus often 

 do considerable damage to the root. As a general rule, however, I 

 found that the outer skiu of these swedes, thus operated upon, was 

 more or less previously injured, either by the bites of hares or rabbits, 

 or the punctures of some insect. I only found a single instance of 

 grain in the crop of wood pigeons during the severe weather, and in 

 this case the bird had swallowed entire some half heads of wheat, 

 evidently' taken from some stack side. 



Wild Ducks. — Every species of wild duck has been extremely 

 scarce during the winter in the Huraber district. The return of wild 

 fowl killed by a gunner from a " canoe " on this coast is remarkably 

 small, not more than half a dozen widgeons. An old wild-fowl shooter 

 told me the other day that he never knew wild-fowl plentiful on the 

 H umber, no matter how severe the weather, after Christmas, unless 

 there had been some severe weather, frost and snow, earlier in the 

 season, to drive the ducks into the Humber. If they came in before 

 Christmas they remained the winter, if not they never came in at all. 

 The only ducks I have shot on our streams this season have been a 

 few mallards. They were in extremely fine condition, one in particular 

 weighing three pounds within an ounce. 



Snow Bunting, &c. — The severity of the frost, as well as the great 

 depth of the snow, in this district, totally excluded our smaller birds 

 from obtaining their living in the open country. Large flocks of 

 various species were driven to seek shelter and food in the fold and 

 stack-yards, eagerly contending for any stray grains of corn under the 

 rick sides. I have thus seen, at the same time, twites, linnets, 

 chaffinches, greenfinches, blackheaded buntings, corn buntings, yellow- 

 hammers, hedge sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds and starlings, all 

 actively foraging; occasionally a flock of snow buntings would join 

 them : these latter birds, however, were in no way inconvenienced bv 

 the severity of the season, keeping the open country and thriving when 

 any other bird would have inevitably starved to death. Their 

 iavourite haunt was on those grass-lands, where patches of rough grass 

 rose above the snow. It is astonishing with what ease and rapidity 



