4840 Tue ZooLocist—Marcu, 1876. 
base on the outer webs, and about the centre of each feather a triangular 
pale red mark on inner webs. Primaries above have a rhomboidal white 
spot as underneath. A bright crimson bar, about one inch wide on the 
average, runs across primaries and secondaries, the colour being on the outer 
webs, and the secondaries having a triangular spot as underneath. Greater 
wing-coverts a mixture of crimson and ash-colour, with black tips. Lesser 
wing-coverts same colour, without the black tips. Bill slightly bent.— 
FS. Mitchell; Clitheroe, Lancashire, February 12, 1876. 
[The reader is referred back to the ‘ Zoologist’ for 1874 (S. S. 4664), 
where the occurrence of a specimen of Tichodroma phcenicoptera at 
Stratton Hall is recorded by Mr. Bell. Are these the same bird? and 
has the Linnean specific name of muraria lasted long enough? It is very 
characteristic of the habits of the bird—Hdward Newman.] 
The Nuthatch (Sitta cesia, Wolf).—* A little bird, sometimes seen, but 
often heard in the Park at Woodstock from the noise that it makes, 
commonly called the Wood-cracker: described to me (for I had not the 
happiness to see it) to be about the bigness of a Sparrow, with a blue back, 
and a reddish breast, a wide mouth and a long bill, which it puts into a 
crack or splinter of a rotten bough of a tree, and makes a noise as if it 
were rending asunder, with that violence that the noise may be heazd at 
least twelve score yards, some haye ventured to say a mile from the place.”— 
Extract from Plot's ‘ Natural History of Oxfordshire’ (1677). 
This is evidently the nuthatch, a species not omitted by Willughby, as ~ 
Mr. Plot supposed. The account he gives of its habits is not accurate. 
Though it can, as is observed in Yarrell (‘ British Birds,’ 4th ed., vol. i., 
p- 474), make a good noise upon a nut when it has fixed one in a chink, 
yet it does not make nearly so much as a woodpecker, nor does it do it in, 
the same manner. Tunstall was the first to notice the mistake (Syn. of the 
Newe. Mus., p. 61), and after him Montagu (article Green Woodpecker), 
but Pennant and Donovan quote the passage with approbation.—J. H. 
Gurney, jun. 
The Roller.—The beautiful roller has occurred in several well-authen- 
ticated instances in Norfolk, but Mr. Stevenson remarks that except in 
two or three cases he has been wholly unable to trace the specimens 
(‘ Birds of Norfolk,’ vol. i., p. 311). I have just ascertained the fate of one 
of these lost rarities, which was shot at Antingham, near here, and, still 
better, had the specimen presented to-me. It appears that it was taken 
to Mr. Spink, a barber and birdstuffer (why do these trades so often go 
together ?) at North Walsham, and some attempt was made to keep it alive, 
but, being a good deal shot in the legs, it died on the third day. My father 
happened to be passing through, bought the bird, and gave it to the gentle- 
man who has now most kindly—after having it in his possession thirty 
years or more—made a present of it to me. The earliest notice of the 
OEE Ee a 
