4814 THE ZooLoGisT—M arcu, 1876. 
from the flooded country not far from Taunton, and a Manx 
shearwater from Watchet. 
22nd. Siskins and common redpolls were noticed to-day on 
some alders by the village brook. About this date a little auk was 
caught on the Taw, near Barnstaple, and brought to the local bird- 
stuffer; and a second fine example of the roughlegged buzzard 
trapped on Exemoor was sent in by the keeper of Mr. F. W. 
Knight. The winter of 1875-6 has been a great one for rough- 
legged buzzards ; numbers having occurred in Scotland, Norfolk, 
and other parts of the United Kingdom. Mr. Clark-Kennedy 
describes (S. S. 4795), the capture of twenty buzzards in the 
neighbourhood of Edinburgh, but does not mention whether these 
were Buteo vulgaris or Archibuteo lagopus. They were probably 
the latter. 
29th. Driving down the lane from Bagborough to Bishop’s 
Lydeard this morning, I noticed a gray shrike, which I took to be 
Lanius excubitor, in the hedge. 
8]st. Towards the end of the year the Barnstable birdstuffer 
received a very curious buzzard which had been trapped in North 
Devon. This bird is of a dark olive-brown all over, the colour 
appearing iridescent on the scapularies and upper wing-coverts. 
It has feathered tarsi, and is a larger-looking bird than any speci- 
men of the roughlegged buzzard with which I have compared it, 
and stands higher on its legs, the tarsi measuring three inches and 
a half in length, while those of A. lagopus are less, a female mea- 
sured by Mr. J. H. Gurney having its tarsi but two inches nine 
lines; and one described by Mr. Sharpe, in his book on the 
‘Birds of Prey,’ three inches and one line. Mr. Gurney, senior, 
informs me that a melanism of A. lagopus is extremely rare, while 
dark varieties of an allied North-American species, A. Sancti- 
Johannis, are not infrequent. It is thus probable that the dark 
buzzard I have been describing belongs to the American species 
of Archibuteo ; if so it is its first occurrence, as far as Mr. Gurney 
knows, in Europe. 
JANUARY, 1876. 
A sharp frost, with alittle snow. Flushed a green sandpiper from 
a warm ditch close to my house this morning, and saw it on 
several occasions subsequently. ‘This is a bird which yearly 
becomes scarce. I am told it used to be frequently seen on the 
