OCCASIONAL NOTES. 149 



it had I been so disposed : I saw another — perhaps the same bird — ou the 

 2Gth February. Two or three Rough-legged Buzzards were seen during 

 the autumn, and a Buffon's Skua was shot near Ollerton in November ; 

 a Long-tailed Duck was also obtained during that month on the Trent near 

 Nottingham, and a Gadwall was sent to a Nottingham birdstuffer from 

 Lincolnshire. I purchased of Stauley, a naturalist at Nottingham, a 

 beautiful specimen of the Bee-eater, which was shot in July, 1879, in a 

 pea-field at Ingoldsby, near Bowes, in Lincolnshire: though three years 

 back, so rare a bird is worth recording. This has been one of the best 

 partridge seasons and the worst wildfowl winters I have ever known. — 

 J. Whitaker (Rainvvorth Lodge, near Mansfield). 



Variety of the Common Snipe.— Some time ago Mr. Vingoe for- 

 warded me a Snipe from Penzance, which he claims to be a distinct species. 

 He tells me he has obtained more than thirty examples in his neighbour- 

 hood, that sportsmen of the locality are now well acquainted with it, and 

 many have been sent him for preservation. The peculiarity of this Snipe 

 consists in its tail, which is much longer than that of the Common Snipe, 

 ami is square instead of rounded ; it is also a somewhat smaller bird. The 

 length of tail in the Common Snipe is two inches and two-eighths ; in 

 Vingoe 's Snipe the tail is two inches and five-eighths, the two outer tail- 

 feathers being longer than the next adjoining. Some time ago a Snipe 

 answering this description was termed Scolopax Brehmi, and after a time 

 was considered to be merely a Common Snipe with the central feathers not 

 fully grown in' the tail. This explanation, however, will hardly do for the 

 Penzance birds, as it would require their tails to develope into full an inch 

 more than the average length of tail in the Common Snipe. I do not 

 myself regard this variation in the tail-feathers as of specific value, and 

 probably many long-tailed Snipes have been shot and pocketed elsewhere 

 without notice ; only, if they are as plentiful in other localities as they 

 appear to be about Penzance, they must constitute a numerous race. — 

 Murray A. Mathew (Stonehall, Wolf's Castle, Pembrokeshire). 



The "Churring" of the Nuthatch.— The idea of the noise called 

 by Mr. J. Young "churring" (p. 113) being caused by the Nuthatch is 

 quite new to me. Nuthatches are numerous here, and the Small Spotted 

 Woodpecker not infrequent. I have on several occasions (after watching 

 with great care) seen the latter in the act of causing this noise, during 

 which the head vibrated with great rapidity, and (as I believed then, though 

 I am told by others that it is not so) apparently causing the noise by the 

 rapid beating of its beak against the hard dead spur of a broken limb of the 

 tree. Before I traced the noise unmistakably to the Woodpecker, I could 

 easily have persuaded myself that it was caused by any bird on which my 

 eye happened to light, in the immediate neighbourhood whence the noise 



