OCCASIONAL NOTES. 407 
Hallowtide (Nov. Ist), 1877, that it was caught alive by a farmer in a warren 
on the north-west shore of the entrance of Lough Foyle. It had gorged itself 
on a rabbit, and allowed itself to be caught without difficulty. It was kept 
alive for two or three days on raw beef, and then died, when the skin, now 
before me, was preserved by a bird-fancier, a sergeant of police in the 
neighbourhood. It is to be regretted that when first captured it did not 
find its way to some practical falconer, who would doubtless have turned so 
great a prize to good account.—J. K. Harrine. 
Cotour Sense in Brrps.—In a recent number of ‘ Nature,’ a corre- 
spondent of that journal makes the following interesting observations on 
colour sense in birds:—‘I have been lately watching,” he says, “ with 
great delight, two Goldfinches building their nest. ‘They placed it nearly 
at the end of an outside branch of a young sycamore tree, so that there was 
nothing but sky above it, and the gravel-path below. ‘The window from 
which I observed them, being never opened, and well covered with flowers 
in pots and a blind, seems to have caused them no alarm, although not 
more than two yards distant from them; and their object appears to have 
been to make their nest invisible from below. To this end they chose their 
building materials with such skill and such colour-matching power that if 
one had not seen the nest built it would be quite impossible to discover it ; 
to match the tree they took its long flexible blossoms, and to match the 
sky the equally long and flexible stalks and flowers of the garden forget- 
me-not, of which a bed was close at hand in full bloom. I watched them 
carefully, and, as far as I could see, they used no other materials than these 
flowers, though I saw one of them attempting to get the dirty-white cotton 
tie off a budded rose tree. At all events, the nest was mainly built of them. 
The blue of the forget-me-not has of course faded, but the general effect 
from below is that of a scarcely visible grey green thickening of one of the 
bunches of sycamore leaves. They seemed to enjoy flinging their flower- 
wreaths about. And that leads to the question whether birds—who are in 
many ways like children—do not often, out of mere playfulness and love of 
colour, pull to pieces yellow crocuses and other bright flowers.” 
Atpixe Swirt iy YorgssrrE.—On April 17th I saw an Alpine Swift 
at Scarborough, the first of the Swallow tribe I saw this year. It was 
about at intervals for a fortnight or so, after which I saw it no more.— 
L. H. West (Glenrock, Brough, East Yorkshire). 
Wuincuat In CornwaLt.—On August 22nd I saw a Whinchat in 
our garden. As this is a rare bird in Cornwall, 1 thought you might like 
to publish its occurrence in ‘The Zoologist.’ I am quite sure it was the 
Whinchat and not the Stonechat, as I watched it for some time through a 
telescope, and clearly saw the white stripe over the eye—Hurpert P. Sagi 
(Polbrean, The Lizard). 
