514 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
May came in with a bitter east wind. On the Ist the Sedge 
Warbler was heard and seen, and the 2nd brought Swallows, “ not 
single spies, but in battalions.” On this day I observed a flock of 
about fifty Knots on the foreshore, and could perceive no sign of 
any change of dress from the ordinary sober gray of winter. The 
House Martin came on the 6th, and on the 8th I saw a very con- 
siderable flock of Fieldfares; wind E.N.E. and very cold. The 
only Lesser Whitethroat seen by me this season was, on the 12th, 
actively engaged searching for food on the branch of a pear tree 
trained on the side of the house. I watched the little fellow for 
some minutes at the distance of only a few feet. On the 14th— 
wind north, dull and cold—the Spotted Flycatcher and Swift were 
seen. The Garden Warblers were unusually late, none being 
heard here before the 17th. 
On May 26th I saw a pair of Turtle Doves perched together on 
a tree by the roadside near Riby, Colonel Tomline’s Lincolnshire 
seat, a locality where they now regularly nest. On the 29th a flock 
of fifteen Turnstones were foraging amongst the bladder-wrack on 
the Humber embankment. Whimbrel never visited us in less 
numbers, and a small flock of eight were all I saw during the 
month. 
The nest of a Sedge Warbler on June 2nd contained two eggs. 
The Reed Warblers, however, which I first found nesting in our 
north-east marsh district in 1876, only returned to their nesting 
haunts on the 14th June, at which time the autumn-mown reeds in 
the drains were sufficiently advanced to enable them to commence 
building. 
I have commenced these notes with an extract from a letter 
of Mr. Gitke’s. I will conclude them in the same manner. On 
June Sth he writes, ‘‘ Two days ago an Emberiza melanocephala, 
a male of last autumn changing for summer dress without moult, 
was killed here, and is a very interesting catch.” 
