The Zoologist — April, 1871. 2561 



sometimes as much as twenty-four inches of water would fall in the same 

 number of hours, and any attempt to bury the huge beast would have been 

 unsuccessful. Fortunately for my comfort, the spot was more than five 

 miles away, and I had no occasion to go down to the river more than two 

 or three times till the rains ceased and the sun dried. — Calcutta, January, 

 1871. [Communicated.] 



Continued Occurrence of Buzzards in Kent. — The extraordinary 

 abundance of buzzards in Kent still continues. I have this day seen a pair 

 in the woods here, and they have been fi-equently seen in numbers varying 

 from one to five from the time that I first wrote to the ' Zoologist.' Never 

 till this winter did I realize what a very large bird a buzzard looks on the 

 wing. The hooded crows, which are their constant persecutors, seem quite 

 dwarfed by the side of them, and seem little bigger than jays. I see that 

 a gentleman writes from Canterbury to the 'Field' to say that eleven 

 buzzards have been killed near there. I quite agree with him that this 

 extraordinary flight is due to the war in France. They seem chiefly to 

 feed on carrion and small rabbits, probably also moles and mice. From the 

 accurate observations I have now been able to make, I am convinced that I 

 hardly ever, if ever, saw this bird previous to this winter, and I confess 

 myself to have been wrong about the supposed roughlegged buzzards in 

 1867 : I now consider that those birds were hen harriers in the brown 

 plumage, which, having the rump and upper tail-coverts white, might be 

 said to have the upper part of the tail white. I had no idea then what a 

 heavy-looking bird a buzzard was. Another supposed common buzzard, 

 which frequented the shrubberies here a few years ago, and was generally 

 found on the ground, was probably a honey buzzard, for though too heavy- 

 looking for any other genus of the FalconidaB, it was too long in the tail and 

 too narrow in the wing for a common buzzard — Clifton; Cohham Hall, 

 Kent, JSLarch 16, 1871. 



fir eat Gray Shrike in Shetland. — On the 26 th of December, as I was 

 standing on the beach at Baltasound, loading my gun, a gray shrike came 

 flying across the Voe in a southerly direction, and, passing within ten yards 

 of me, continued its flight until lost to sight against the hills. It flew 

 heavily, as if wearied with a long journey, and kept very low, even when 

 crossing the water. The wind was blowing moderately from N.E. at the 

 time, and the ground was covered with snow. — Henry L. Saxhy ; Balta- 

 sound, Shetland, January 13, 1871. 



Roller in Orliney. — About the end of October, 1869, Mr. Peter Anderson, 

 one of the light-keepers on the island of Sandag, shot a roUer there, after it 

 had been in the neighbom-hood for several days. Not long ago he kindly 



