The Zoologist— December, 1873. 3785 



have prevented its departure at the same time as others of its 

 species. 



20lh. Took a ramble into the country; found green woodpeckers 

 plentiful, and wood larks singing beautifully ; also observed a 

 female hen-harrier, a bird very numerous with us of late years. 



23rd. Went to Laira in a boat ; saw twelve herons close together 

 on a mud-bank, met with some common redshanks, and killed a 

 wigeon — very early for the appearance of this species on our coast. 

 Common sandpipers still plentiful. 



25th. There was a great congregation of martins on the telegraph- 

 wire, and many flying about ; I counted above one hundred and 

 twenty on a wire close together, reminding me of a string of beads. 



29th. Took a trip by rail, and on passing by the mud-flats near 

 Teignmouth, I found them almost covered in many places with 

 blackheaded and herring gulls, both young and old; there were 

 also a few mews. Starlings exceedingly numerous in the fields 

 throughout the journey : these birds are yearly increasing to a great 

 extent. Saw a dunlin a few days since which had been killed by 

 flying against a telegraph-wire. 



October, 1873. 

 1st. When in the neighbourhood of Tiverton I found wood 

 larks plentiful, and in full song, but on again visiting the flat 

 marshy moors of the adjoining county of Somerset, near Bridg- 

 water, where I observed so many kestrels last autumn, to my great 

 surprise I did not see one, nor could I account for their absence 

 until 1 heard a farmer casually remark that all the rats and mice, 

 which were swarming last year about the fields, had somehow dis- 

 appeared, having perhaps been drowned by the floods of last 

 winter, the flat country around for miles being for months under 

 water. This to me seemed at once to account for the absence of 

 the kestrels. These birds have been very numerous in Devon and 

 Cornwall during the present autumn, and many have been, I am 

 sorry to say, shot or trapped, and the stomachs of all examined by 

 me contained only the remains of beetles and mice, with the exception 

 on one occasion of the larvae of a moth. There is now in the posses- 

 sion of Mr. Lucraft, animal preserver, of Slonehouse, a beautiful young 

 pair of living orangelegged falcons {Falco vesperiimis), whigh were 

 caught on board ship, it is said, off" the coast of Siberia. They 

 are in the first year's plumage, very tame and docile, will sit on the 



