OCCASIONAL NOTES. 179 
easily made in the following way :—Place the centre of a small piece of 
glass-tubing, about three inches long, in the flame of a blow-pipe. When 
thoroughly red, draw it out gradually with both hands and allow it to cool. 
When the tube is afterwards broken at the narrowest part and both ends 
separately placed in the blow-pipe flame it will be easy to smooth the sharp 
glass at the points where broken. Now insert the other end of either piece 
in the hole of a boy’s common india-rubber ball previously filled with water, 
and you will have a capital syringe. Two or three pieces of tubing, with 
different sized nozzles to suit the eggs to be blown, will be found necessary. 
In this way any one can make, with very little trouble, a syringe for very 
small eggs, probably with a finer point than any to be purchased.— WiL1AM 
W. Fremyne (18, Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin). 
NesTING oF THE GREY WaGTAIL IN OxFORDsSHTRE.—Prof. Newton, 
in the fourth edition of Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds,’ p. 554, speaking of the 
nesting-haunts of this species, says :—“ A line drawn across England from 
the Start Point, slightly curving to round the Derbyshire hills, and ending 
at the mouth of the Tees, will, it is believed, mark off the habitual breeding- 
range of this species in the United Kingdom: for southward and eastward 
of such a line it never or only occasionally breeds.” It may be as well, 
therefore, to record the fact that in the summer of 1875 I repeatedly saw a 
pair of Grey Wagtails in an osier-bed in the parish of South Newington, in 
the above county. They frequently carried food in their beaks, but I was 
unable to hit upon the exact spot where the nest was. The parent birds 
were much agitated when I came closer to them, and, owing to the extreme 
seclusion of the place, they had probably never been disturbed. This osier- 
bed is situated by the side of a small river, the Swere, locally celebrated for 
its trout. I think I may say I have seen this species in Oxfordshire, 
nearly, if not quite, in every month in the year. It is well known to breed 
in the neighbouring county of Bucks.* It is fond of feeding in the 
vicinity of mills, in one favourite spot. I consider it an excessively local 
bird. I saw a pair in the first three months, June, July, and the last 
three months in last year. Along the sides of the Ouse in Bedfordshire, 
in August, they were wonderfully numerous; small parties of five or six 
were constantly met with, often feeding in company with the Common 
Sandpiper. The last I saw in Oxfordshire was on December 17th, when 
I found a fine male in a drain which usually held Snipe. I knocked it over, 
and have it stuffed. I never look at that bird without a smile, as a friend 
who was with me missed it three times in succession; its peculiar flight, 
with its deep regular undulations, fairly puzzled him.—C. Marruzew Prior 
(Bedford). 
* See ‘ Birds of Bucks and Berks,’ p. 26; also Gould, ‘ Contr. Orn.,’ 1849, p. 137, 
quoted by Prof. Newton in the passage above referred to. 
