NOTES AND QUERIES. 337 



canvas tops, as well as at many of the West End poulterers' shops. They 

 are fattened chiefly on millet and hemp-seed. — Ed.J 



The Goldfinch in Oxfordshire. — It is perhaps worth recording that 

 upwards of four hundred Goldfinches were taken by four birdcatchers in 

 the neighbourhood of Oxford during September and the first half of 

 October last year. Two men, who worked together, sent to London twenty 

 dozen Goldfinches of both sexes, while two others caught seven dozen and 

 six dozen on their own estimates. By the end of November very few Gold- 

 finches are left in the neighbourhood of Oxford, as they migrate in that 

 month ; they again become tolerably plentiful in March. A few winter 

 with us, and I have seen fifteen in a " charm " during a protracted frost. 

 About Danbury Mr. 0. V. Alpin notices them chiefly on the approach of 

 winter. Though I have paid more attention to this species than to any 

 other, I have met with no varieties except a few of those mentioned by 

 Mr. Blake-Kuox. White-throated birds are considered rare in Oxon, 

 though I have seen males and females of various degrees. Some years ago 

 a pied "grey-pate " was netted near Garsington ; an old bird in black plumage 

 was also taken by a Hinksey fowler, from whose mate I procured, in Sept., 

 1877, a newly-captured finch, with the breast tinged with golden yellow ; 

 the crimson band across the occiput also occurs in Oxon, but, so far as my 

 observations go, it occurs only in cage-moulted males. — H. A. Macpherson. 



Grey Crow nesting in Warwickshire.— I am informed by my friend 

 Mr. H. D. Crompton, of Edgbaston, Birmingham, that a pair of Grey 

 Crows nested last spring at Sutton Coldfield Park, near Birmingham. He 

 remarked that the nest was very large. Instances of the Grey Crow 

 breeding so far north are rare, and I think therefore the instance referred 

 to is worthy of being noted in ' The Zoologist.'— J. Whitaker (Rainworth 

 Lodge, near Mansfield, Notts). 



The Grey Crow in Co. Cork. — According to Messrs. Hart and Palmer 

 (pp. 225, 296) the Grey Crow, Corvus comix, is considered to be of rare 

 occurrence in the county of Dublin and on the west coast of Ireland. In 

 this neighbourhood the bird is by no means uucommou. I have seen as 

 many as five or six old Grey Crows together in my lawn, and they are 

 frequently met with along the sea-coast here. I came across fifteen or 

 sixteen nests this year iu the limited area of the Myross peninsula (three 

 miles and a half in length by two in breadth), and found the first eg<*s as 

 early as the 15th March— a date far in advance of that given in Yarrell's 

 statement (4th edition), " It is generally the end of April or the begiuning 

 of May before the nest is prepared." Underneath the nest of a Grey Crow 

 on a Scotch fir, Pinus sylvestris, I found the body of a dead Black Crow 

 stuck on the branches about twenty feet from the ground! — Charles 

 Donovan, jun. (Myross Wood, Leap, Co. Cork). 



