Tue ZooLocist—May, 1876. 4901 
since in the neighbourhood of Plymouth, and was recorded by 
Dr. Couch, in his ‘ Cornish Fauna.’ 
April 7th. Saw the first swallows and sand martins flying over 
the sands at Instow, North Devon, this morning. 
With respect to my very dark roughlegged buzzard from North 
Devon, I may state that, since my last notes about it, I have had 
the advantage of Mr. J. H. Gurney’s opinion, who kindly came to 
Bishop’s Lydeard expressly to examine it. He says, “‘ Your 
buzzard is a splendid specimen, and I believe very nearly, if not 
quite, unique.” But it does not correspond in the transverse bars 
of the tail with the American roughlegged buzzard (A. Sancti- 
Johannis) ; for my bird has broad bands, where in the American 
species (if, pace Dr. Coues, we may so term it) those of a similar 
colour are narrow. The American A. Sancti-Johannis has narrow 
bars of gray colour and broad bars of dark colour; while A. lagopus, 
on the contrary, has broad bars of a gray-white, alternated with 
narrower bars of brown; and, as far as the bars can be traced on 
my dark specimen, they agree in character with the markings on 
the tail of A. lagopus. In Wilson’s ‘ American Ornithology,’ there 
is given a figure of what he called the “black hawk” (A. Sanct¢- 
Johannis), in which the bands across the tail are well depicted. 
Mr. Gurney’s conclusion is that the dark buzzard I possess is a 
melanism, or Sabinism, of A. lagopus. 
Murray A. MaTHEw. 
Bishop’s Lydeard, April 10, 1876. 
Ornithological Notes from Devonshire and Cornwall. 
By J. GarcomBeE, Esq. 
(Continued from Zool. 8, S. 4824.) 
FEBRUARY AND Marcu, 1876. 
Herring Guil.—February 8. Weather very mild and fine. Her- 
ring gulls are now, many of them, in full breeding plumage, and 
have already commenced their amatory cries in the air. These 
birds vary greatly in size: the other day 1 examined an enormous 
adult specimen, which was fully as large as an ordinary-sized Larus 
marinus, its wing measuring nineteen inches from the carpal joint. 
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and Knot.—February 10. 1 have 
just seen a specimen of the lesser spotted woodpecker and a knot, 
both killed in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. 
SECOND SERIES—VOL. XI. Z 
