260 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Few rare birds have been heard of, although many may have appeared 
without being noticed, there being few persons in the island, taxidermists 
excepted, who have a fair knowledge of birds. Messrs. Smith, of Newport, 
inform me that a Common Buzzard, a male, was sent to them. It was shot 
at Steephill, in this neighbourhood, on the 22nd January, while seated on 
a wall,—the ground being covered with snow,—preying on a Starling, of 
which species there is a colony in the ivy-clad walls of the Castle. On 
dissection the remains of a Thrush was found in the stomach. Two Thick- 
knee Plovers were shot at Atherfield on the 5th November by a tradesman 
of this town, some lads having observed them in a ploughed field; though 
thus exposed they were readily approached, and on taking wing one was 
brought down at the first discharge; the other having alighted was stalked 
and also secured. In the gizzard of the one examined grain only was found. 
A female Great Crested Grebe was shot on January 20th; the stomach 
contained a mass of feathers—not an uncommon thing, it appears, with 
birds of this family, though difficult to account for when not moulting or 
nesting, as in this case. Macgillivray says that a great quantity of feathers 
was found in the stomach of a Red-necked Grebe. A Heron, I hear on 
good authority, was captured when “ napping,” or half-starved, by a brook- 
side, but released after a week’s confinement, being found too troublesome 
a charge. I am informed by Messrs. Smith that on dissecting two birds of 
this species some time baek, a trout about nine inches in length was found 
in one, and the stomach of the other contained a fish eleven inches long. 
Early in January a male Snow Bunting, in adult plumage, being mostly of 
a white and cream-colour, was sbot at Westover, in the northern part of the 
island, by a gamekeeper. An albino or yellowish white Greenfinch was 
shot on January 3rd at Yarmouth. I hear that a Green Woodpecker was 
shot more than a year ago near Newtown, not far from Parkhurst Forest ; 
my informant saw it at the time, and knows the man who shot it. Wood- 
peckers are rarely met with in the island; two or three instances only have 
occurred to my knowledge. ‘Though Rooks were seen in their nesting-trees 
for some weeks, seemingly none the worst for snow or frost, they were not 
observed to repair their nests till March Ist—Henry Hapriexp (Ventnor, 
Isle of Wight). 
Smatt Brrps carkteD BY CRANES IN THEIR MiGrations.—Dr. Van 
Lennep, in his ‘ Bible Customs in Bible Lands,’ speaking of the great 
numbers of small birds which inhabit Western Asia, as compared with 
Europe and North America, explains the circumstance by the fact that 
‘even those of feeblest wing have an easy road from Palestine, Syria, and 
Mesopotamia, by the Isthmus of Suez, and over the narrow Red Sea, to 
their winter quarters in Tropical Africa, whilst Nature has provided them 
with extraordinnry means of conveyance from Asia Minor southward across 
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