The Zoologist— August, 1873. 3629 



boys with stones, because they could not get at them. This, it 

 appears, they almost invariably do, and I also heard of a man 

 having shot into a nest at Wembury, near Plymouth, from the 

 same cause. 



7th. Wind W.N.W., blowing a gale, and very cold. Saw a swift, 

 and the sedge warbler was heard by a friend. 



8th. A flock of whimbrels came in from the sea and flew up the 

 river Tamar. I also saw a specimen which had been taken in a 

 very exhausted state on board ship a week previously. 



10th. Went to the cliffs at Wembury, at the entrance of the river 

 Yealm, where I was pleased to find the herring gull breeding, and 

 saw several sitting on their nests, besides a flock of full two hundred, 

 which kept flying round within fifteen yards of my head, uttering 

 their incessant laughing kind of cry until I look my departure. 

 Some would alight singly or form groups on the projecting crags 

 and grassy slopes on the top of the cliff close by, and the effect 

 produced by the snowy plumage of those sitting on their nests or 

 standing among the beautiful tufts of sea pinks was indeed lovely. 

 On my way to Wembury I remarked the following species: — swift, 

 swallow, cuckoo, sedge warbler, willow wren, chiffchaff, wood wren, 

 whitethroat, blackcap and tree pipit. 



15th. There was a great show of young rooks at the stalls in the 

 market to-day. 



16lh. Saw a fine peregrine falcon which had been killed a week 

 before, likewise four oyslercatchers shot from a flock of nine in the 

 neighbourhood of Plymouth. 



19lh. Visited Croyde, North Devon, interesting to me as one of 

 the places frequented by the flock of great bustards in the winter 

 of 1871. All the villagers and country people to whom I spoke on 

 the subject of their appearance persisted in calling them " turkey 

 buzzards," and some whom I suppose had not really seen the 

 birds seemed quite astonished to hear their proper name, and that 

 they were not birds of prey. Possibly some of the sailors of the 

 neighbourhood having talked of the turkey buzzards met with abroad 

 might have caused the name to be thus confounded, or, more likely 

 still, the fancied resemblance of the bird to the turkey and the 

 name to the buzzard caused the mistake. Observed a great many 

 herons and whimbrels on the mud-banks of the river Exe, numbers 

 of sand martins near Exeter, and heard the corn crake close to 

 Barnstaple. 



SECOND SERIES— VOL. VIII. 2 P 



