OCCASIONAL NOTES. 448 
Selbourne in considerable numbers about Michaelmas; and it would 
appear that they are usually gregarious in their autumn migrations. On 
their appearance in Dorsetshire in the spring, they seem, as far as my own 
observations extend, to be more scattered. Among the Yorkshire dales I 
have watched them with much interest in the breeding-season, when the 
hill-sides echo the day through with their wild notes, and have observed the 
boldness with which they endeayour to repel any intruder from their 
nests: these are found in numbers at the base of the blocks of stone that 
are strewn over the moors, and on stooping down to examine the eggs 
I have been quite startled with the audacity with which the parent birds 
will fly in a direct line towards you, only diverging with a loud chatter 
when within a foot or so of your face. In that district they would not 
unfrequently be seen from the parlour windows, hunting for worms on the 
grass-plots much after the manner of our Blackbirds in the southern 
counties.— ArtHur Lister (Leytonstone). 
Hospy Nestinc 1x Hampsuree (p. 298).—From a short note in Wise’s 
‘New Forest’ it seems that the breeding of the Hobby was a well- 
recognized fact at the time of the publication of that work, although its 
annual decrease was particularly noticed. “That the species has become 
comparatively scarce cannot be questioned; but it is equally certain that it 
visits, if it does not breed in, the extensive woods of the New Forest almost 
every season, for scarcely a summer passes but one or more specimens are 
sent to me from that neighbourhood, and generally in June, when I 
conjecture they would be nesting. On the 5th of August, 1876, a game- 
keeper in the Forest sent a beautiful pair of these birds for me to see, 
which he said he had shot from the nest; but on questioning him as to 
whether the nest contained eggs or young (being so late in the season), 
he eluded the question by saying he “ believed” they were nesting near, 
but that he had not discovered the nest. In the previous year a young 
bird was sent me from the same locality, and its wing-feathers were not 
sufficiently grown to enable any extended flight, so it must have been 
reared somewhere near. The same year a pair built a nest, or rather 
appropriated an old one, in a wood within two miles of Ringwood, but the 
female was shot before she laid an egg, and subsequently the male disap- 
peared. The Hobby is said to arrive in the New Forest, where it is 
locally known as the “ Van-winged Hawk,” about the same time as the 
Honey Buzzard formerly did; but I fear eventually it will share the fate of 
the latter bird, which has ceased to visit us for several consecutive seasons ; 
and no wonder, since the epithet of “ vermin ” has been bestowed upon all 
its race; and the exorbitant price offered by dealers, both for birds and 
eggs, has gradually led to its extinction.—G. B. Corsrn (Ringwood, Hants). 
Hoopep Crow 1x Norrotx 1n Avucust.— On the 18th of August my 
father saw a Hooded Crow here. On the 20th I saw it again in my 
