THE ZooLtocist—JuLy, 1876. 4983 
Snow Bunting.—April 5. I saw the last this morning, three 
birds, and one of these, evidently a male, was in mature plumage, 
and a most beautiful object he was, on a bright sunny day flitting 
from clod to clod of some brown fallows. This is eleven days 
later than I have ever previously noticed them in this county. 
Hooded Crow.—April 5. The last of the hooded crows were seen 
to-day on their old favourite feeding-ground, the Humber foreshore. 
I met with them again, six weeks later, under very different cir- 
cumstances both of scene and place, beyond the golden green of 
the opening birch woods, on the fell sides above Loch Hess, and 
the deer-forests northward of Loch Lochy, amidst some of the 
wildest and most beautiful scenery of the Highlands, a singular 
contrast to the flat, muddy foreshores of this ugly tidal river. 
Hoopoe.—A fine male hoopoe was shot during the first week in 
April by the keeper on the Hainton Estate, near Wragley. 
Wheatear.—April 11. First seen, a female; I saw no more till 
the 24th, when, with a warm south wind, numbers arrived in 
pairs. 
Lesser Blackbacked Gulls——April 14. These gulls are in flocks 
inland ; they are in full breeding plumage. A fortnight later and 
they will have gone northward to their breeding stations. 
Yellow Wagtail.—April 17. First seen; three or four days 
beyond the average time of arrival. 
Fieldfare.—April 18. In flocks near the coast. 
Carrion Crow.—April 18. This is still a very commou bird in 
this neighbourhood, two or three pairs nesting in every small 
plantation. They are a late nester compared with the rook. We 
took the first egg to-day from a nest on the top of an oak in a 
wood. On the 24th J took three eggs from a nest in the top of a 
bushy spruce, about twelve or fourteen feet from the ground. 
These eggs, which differ greatly from the normal size, measure two 
inches in length by 1°05 in breadth (this was the largest egg, the 
other two were slightly smaller). This nest, as usual, was most 
warmly and thickly lined with wool, hair, old rags, &c., closely 
mixed and matted together. I have observed one thing in 
- connection with the carrion crow in this neighbourhood, that from 
the time the first egg is deposited we almost invariably find the 
hen on the nest between three and five in the afternoon. Can any 
one tell me at what time during the twenty-four hours the egg is 
deposited by birds? The only notice of this subject that 1 can at 
