NOTES FROM THE MOY ESTUARY. 173 
Tue Ounce, Felis uncia. 
Mentioned once in the charm uttered by Oberon when, 
squeezing the juice of a flower on Titania’s eyelids as she sleeps, 
he says— 
«‘ What thou seest when thou dost wake 
Do it for thy true love take ; 
Love, and languish for his sake: 
Be it Ounce, or Cat, or Bear, 
Pard, or Boar with bristled hair, 
In thy eye that shall appear 
When thou wak’st, it is thy dear. 
Wake when some yile thing is near.” 
(To be continued.) 
———_—— 
ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM THE MOY ESTUARY. 
By Ropert WARREN. 
OwinG to the unusual mildness of the past winter, but few rare 
birds from the north visited this neighbourhood, and some of our 
regular winter visitors appeared in much smaller numbers than 
usual. 
Lapwings were the only birds I remarked in: larger numbers 
than’in previous years; they commenced assembling on the sands 
in August, and by the first week in September the flocks were 
largely increased. By the Ist October the largest number of 
Lapwings were to be seen on the sands that I ever remember to 
have observed. Some of these flocks evidently consisted of home- 
bred birds, but the greater part must have been strangers. The 
increase in the number of home-bred birds is easily to be accounted 
for, by the unusually wet spring and summer, rain having fallen on 
270 days in the year 1877; the great excess of moisture proving 
favourable to the increase of the Lapwings’ natural food, and 
thus enabling them to rear their broods with greater ease than in a 
dry season, when many young birds must perish from want of both 
food and water. 
Woodcocks and Snipe are much scarcer than usual, the former 
remarkably so. Indeed all the shooters of my acquaintance 
