4216 The Zoologist — November, 1874. 



" Those birds which I sometimes see in confinement always place the 

 limpet with the shell downwards, and then, running the bill rouud_the inner 

 margin with a pecuhar tremulous motion, detach the animal as rapidly as 

 I could with a knife, and far more neatly. I have never seen them use the 

 foot to assist the operation." — P. 175. 



We learn here that oystercatchers, like the dotterel, may be 

 readily domesticated and converted into liilchen pets ; in which 

 case it is well to know they need not be confined to a limpet, much 

 less to an oyster, bill of fare, but will be contented with a " diet of 

 worms," or even occasionally a sop of bread and milk or the yelk 

 of a hard-boiled egg. 



•' A few years ago, returning in a boat from an egg-seeking excursion, 

 I was surprised to hear a sound exactly resembling the cry of an oyster- 

 catcher, but much weaker, proceeding from the handkerchief in which 

 some eggs were tied, and, on examination, found a very handsome egg 

 just chipped by a young bird. I kept it warm in my hands, and on 

 reaching home placed it in wool before the fire. It hberated itself in a 

 few hours, and immediately began running about the kitchen floor, soon 

 afterwards picking up bread soaked in milk, and the yelk of hard-boiled 

 egg. A neighbour, to whom I gave it, soon ' lost fancy ' for it, and the poor 

 thing was starved to death." — P. 176. 



I am well pleased to meet with a short paragraph on the drum- 

 ming of the snipe; it is one of the subjects that has been a kind of 

 " bubbleyjock" with ornithologists : if you express a doubt as to 

 how it is occasioned, the invariable reply is, "Oh ! don't you know 

 that? I thought everybody knew that 1''^ and then follows a 

 solution which is little more than a conjecture, and which con- 

 jectures agree in nothing but differing from each other. The 

 following note by the editor of the * Birds of Shetland' is interesting, 

 and accords with my own views; and 1 may add that although this 

 drumming has generally been treated as peculiar to the snipe, 

 1 believe that several other birds occasionally exhibit an analogous 

 phenomenon. I may remark that in this, as in other cases, the 

 editor has exhibited his intimate acquaintance with bird-life, and 

 a perfect fitness for the task which, through the lamented death of 

 a beloved brother, has thus unexpectedly devolved on him. 



" Many years of isolation from the old work must plead my apology with 

 the well-informed reader, if the point be^-as is very possible — now regarded 

 as settled bej'ond all need for remark ; but perhaps it will not be unduly 

 intrusive if I subjoin an extract from my own notes on this subject, some- 

 what more in detail, written in Shetland in 1*354: — 'I have carefully 



