3490 The Zoologist— April, 1873. 



Flrecpcsted Regnlns at Torquay. — On the 6tli of March a beautiful 

 female of the firecrested kmglet was brought in the flesh to Mr. Shopland, 

 naturalist, at Torquay, who informs me that it is the first he has met with 

 during his long experience in this district. — J. H. Gurney; Marldoii, Totnes. 



Waxwiiigs at Bishop's Lydeard. — A waxwiug appeared on my lawn 

 yesterday. It was about the middle of the day, when the gardener had left 

 for his dinner, and everything was quiet, that I chanced to look out of 

 window, and saw the pretty stranger under the same tree where I had 

 previously seen one on the 7th of last month. I watched the bird both 

 from an upper and lower window, and, the sun shining bright at the time, 

 I had a very clear view of it. A hawfinch has also been paying me repeated 

 visits for some days past, and this bird is nearly as great a stranger in this 

 part of the country as a waxwing. — Murray A. Matheic ; Bishop's Lydeard, 

 March 23, 1873. 



Ray's Wagtail. — The late Rev. Gilbert White, of Selborue, evidently con- 

 founded the gray and yellow wagtails, as he says, " Wagtails, both white and 

 yellow, remain with us the whole year;'" and lam convinced that Mr. Wharton 

 (S. S. 3455) has made the same mistake. The birds which he saw in 

 January, " feeding at the edge of a water-cress bed," were no doubt gray 

 wagtails, adult specimens of which are of a brilliant yellow on the under 

 parts. The yellow wagtail never arrives before April, and is not attached 

 to water like the gray wagtail, but frequents open fields and commons. I 

 do not think that the state of the weather here in the spring can have any 

 effect upon birds, when they are in their winter quarters in Africa; they 

 generally arrive here about the same time every year, but if the weather 

 happens to be cold and stormy they do not sing, and are not observed. 

 I have seen the grasshopper warbler creeping about the hedge-banks, like a 

 mouse, when there was not a leaf to hide it ; and Wilson, in his ' American 

 Ornithology,' says the summer birds of passage generally arrive in the 

 United States about the same time, whether the spring is early or late, and 

 that he has often seen them skipping about the leafless boughs in a late 

 spring. — Henry Doubleday ; Epinng, March 13, 1878. 



Abundance of Snow Buntings, Song Tlirushcs and Bramblings in the 

 Nortli. — At Formby, on the Lancashire coast, on Shrove Tuesday, 1872, 

 I shot five snow buntings from a small flock of sixteen which had been 

 with us all the winter ; and being in want of some more this year, I went 

 again, also on Shrove Tuesday, during the late snow-storms, and killed four 

 light-coloured ones out of a flock of about thirty. I also killed a few 

 bramblings out of a very great number seen, and above three dozen song 

 thrushes as they flew over towards the coast line in an almost uninterrupted 

 stream : every field had a scattered flock in it of from twenty to fifty birds 

 each, whilst on my warren there must have been two hundred in one flock. 

 Three days afterwards the thrushes not captured or killed had left us ; but 



