OCCASIONAL NOTES. 131 
Early in the month, a brother of mine obtained a Spotted Redshank at the 
point where the Frome enters the estuary, a bird which I never happened 
to meet with here before, although no doubt it occurs here annually. 
Curlews and Sheldrakes breed in some numbers round the harbour, and 
will no doubt gradually increase in consequence of the protection afforded 
to them. The Sheldrakes leave us about September, and we see no more 
of them until the first hard weather before Christmas, which, if severe, 
brings in a good many, some of these stopping and bringing up their young. 
I only saw one Grey Phalarope last season, on the 16th October, in South 
Deeps, at the mouth of the harbour. On the 17th I saw the first Northern 
Diver, at the Half-way Diver buoy, not far from Poole, and I shot it with 
my punt-gun. It was, however, an immature bird, weighing nine pounds. 
On the Ist November I saw a beautiful adult bird of this species in Stud- 
land Bay, but failed to obtain it. On 12th November, a man employed on 
the bridge where the railway spans the estuary between Wareham and 
Poole, caught a specimen of the Fork-tailed Petrel alive, the day after the 
very severe gale. On the 20th of the same month a Swallow was flying 
backwards and forwards, on the south front of our house, nearly the whole 
day. On the 21st February, a family of young Song Thrushes left the 
nest in which they were hatched, in a small thicket close to the house. 
An unusual number of sprats in Poole Bay, about the beginning of 
January, brought a large number of Kittiwakes, Guillemots, Razorbills 
and Red-throated Divers, and an unusual show of Gannets. These fine 
birds do not plunge for the sprats as for larger fish, but skim along the top 
of the water, and occasionally get so gorged as to be unable to get on the 
wing. Ihave noticed them in this state, particularly at the slack of the 
tide. A few Oystercatchers arrived the first week in March to have a look 
at their breeding-places. There have been none about the mud-flats since 
October. The Black-headed Gulls were assuming their spring plumage for 
a month previously, and Snipes occasionally drumming for a still longer 
period. About the beginning of April a pair or two of Sandwich Terns 
nearly always make their appearance, and in August a lot of young ones are 
to be seen about, the buoys at the harbour-mouth being a favourite place of 
theirs. They may possibly breed here, but I have never had any proof of it.— 
T. M. Pixs (Westport, Wareham). 
OrniTHoLocicaL Norrs rrom Drvon.—An Iceland Gull was killed in 
Plymouth Sound on December Ist. The plumage was nearly white, with 
very faint markings of brown; indeed so faint that I should think at the 
next moult the back would have assumed the light bluish gray of the adult 
state. On the 8rd I saw two Black Redstarts on the coast, and watched a 
Northern Diver having a long struggle with an eel, which it had some 
difficulty in mastering. I also observed a flock of about a dozen Purple 
