NOTES AND QUERIES. 495 



Common Scoter inland. — It may interest some of your Lancashire 

 readers to know that on October 25th I received from one of our game- 

 keepers in that county a very fine old male Scoter, (Edemia nigra, minus 

 one foot, with a note stating that the bird was "caught" probably in a 

 "pantle," or snipe-snare, on the mere in Tarleton, on 22nd inst. I do not 

 kuow if this species is as common on the Lancashire coast as in other parts 

 of England ; the so-called " mere " is not far from Southport and the estuary 

 of the Ribble, but by the sending of this bird to me it seems that it is 

 considered a rarity even at the short distance that Tarleton is from the 

 tidal waters.— Lilfokd (Lilford Hall, Ouudle, October 26, 1883). 



Rare Birds in Sussex. — A Spotted Redshank, Totanus fuscits, was 

 shot in August, in the Winchelsea Marshes, and is now in the possession 

 of Mr. Thomas Sorrell, of Hastings. The bird is in the autumn plumage 

 so well figured in Dresser's ' Birds of Europe.' Mr. F. Bucknill informs 

 me that, when shooting in the Nook at Rye on Sept. 3rd, he saw three 

 birds which were quite unknown to him ; from his description, they could 

 have been nothing else but Black-winged Stilts, Himantopus candidus. 

 I know the species well, having obtained specimens in Egypt; still great 

 doubt remains in my mind as to the identity of the birds in question. The 

 Spotted Redshank has before now been erroneously recorded as the Stilt 

 (Zool. 1872, p. 3864), and the fact of Totanus fuscus having been— as 

 stated above — obtained in the Winchelsea Level, in the month of August, 

 makes their identity, I fancy, still more doubtful. — Thomas Parkin 

 (Halton, Hastings). 



[The birds may have been Avocets. Both being black and white, with 

 long legs, Avocets and Stilts may be easily confounded at a distance. — Ed.] 



Rare Birds in Cornwall and Stilly — There are at present in the 

 hands of our taxidermist, Mr. W. H. Vingoe, for preservation, a specimen 

 of Bartram's Sandpiper, killed at St. Keverne, near the Lizard, in October 

 last ; also a Pectoral Sandpiper, shot at Scilly ; a Spoonbill, a bird of the 

 year, procured on St. Germans River, near Plymouth ; a Hawfinch from 

 Scilly, where it is exceedingly rare, there being no cover for it. — Thomas 

 Cornish (Penzance). 



[We should be glad of further information respecting the American 



Sandpipers. — Ed.] 



Late nesting of the Nightjar.— I have never found eggs of this 

 species quite so late in the season as the dates mentioned (pp. 380, 429), but 

 I have several times taken them in August, from the 6th to the 9th, and 

 on one occasion I found two quite fresh-laid eggs on the 12th, whilst those 

 taken on the earlier dates were more or less incubated. In my old 

 ramblings for insects about the heaths and woods of this neighbourhood 

 there is no bird with which I was more familiar than the Nightjar, and 



