246 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



the pond with Shovellers, Mallard, and Teal. I have never 

 heard the Shoveller utter any note or sound when flushed; but 

 my friend Mr. J. Ostler Nicholson, who, from living close to their 

 haunts, has had great experience of their habits, says that the 

 note during the breeding-season is " tuck, tuck," and frequently 

 uttered when they are in flight; he once heard it, out of the 

 breeding-season, when a pair were flushed from a pond in the 

 middle of the day. I also saw three male Pochards on an extensive 

 ballast-pit, in part grown up with alder-bushes, flags, and reeds. 

 Several times during the spring, when passing this place, I have 

 noticed these ducks in pairs, and now, from seeing the drakes 

 alone, it is presumable their mates are sitting on eggs. 



May 10th. — S., rain. I saw to-day two couple of Dotterel in 

 an extensive marsh-pasture near the Humber. For thirty years 

 I have generally seen some in this field in Ma}\ I drove very 

 close to the birds in a pony carriage ; they were wonderfully 

 fearless and tame, running quietly forward, and it was only on 

 trying to decrease the short distance between us that they rose 

 to wing with a low mournful whistle, flew a few yards, and again 

 alighted, sometimes quite motionless, or hoisting one wing like a 

 small sail, or running a few steps would quickly stoop and pick 

 some small object from the grass-roots. Listening to the soft 

 melancholy call-note of the bonny birds recalled scenes very 

 different from their present surroundings, and I had only to 

 close my eyes to picture an alpine waste of grey stones set in 

 tufted moss and dwarf creeping-plants, where long steep slopes 

 of velvet turf and loose shingle sweep down to leagues of heather 

 and white cotton-grass, till the broken muirland becomes blended 

 with the shining waters of a loch, backed by an horizon of snow- 

 patched mountain. Dotterel are certainly not so common as 

 they were thirty or forty years ago, when, I am told, "trips" 

 numbering fifty to one hundred were not exceptional ; and I have 

 a note of twenty couple, killed by two guns in one day on the 

 high wolds. This was on their first coming before they pass 

 forward into the marshes, and some years before the passing of 

 the Wild Birds Protection Act. 



May 17th. — Spotted Flycatcher first seen. Found a nest of 

 the Lesser Whitethroat with the bird sitting on the eggs, the nest 

 being placed near the summit of a laurel fronting our lawn. 



May 18th. — S.E. First Garden Warblers; several heard during 



