428 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



see this bird, so cannot express an opinion as to whether it was a variety 

 of the wild species, or an escaped bird of the kind frequently kept in 

 aviaries. Some birds, probably the older males, are very handsome and 

 rich in colour, and a group of twenty or thirty busily engaged in feeding is 

 a very pretty and interesting sight, especially when Wood Pigeons and 

 Stock Doves join them. The effect produced by several birds " purring " at 

 the same time is rather curious. They are still protected, and fed, and 

 I have no doubt that on any fine afternoon iu May or June next I could 

 show a fairly large number to any lover of birds who may wish to see 

 them. — Julian G. Tuck (Tostock Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds). 



Food of Wild Ducks. — At the beginning of August last, when the 

 shooting season commenced, a friend kindly sent me a couple of full-grown 

 " flappers." When picked, I noticed how unusually distended the crop of 

 each appeared to be, which, to the touch, was apparently filled with some- 

 thing coarse and rough, like small pieces of chip. Curiosity led me to open 

 them, when I found the whole cavity completely crammed with cases of 

 caddis-worms, some containing the larva and others empty, as if the birds 

 in their eager feeding had indiscriminately swallowed the cases, whether 

 containing worms or not. I am not versed enough in the Trichoptera to 

 say to what species the cases were referable, — probably more than one, — 

 but I was surprised at the quantity the birds had taken at a single meal, 

 and when turned out, it did not seem possible that the two crops could have 

 contained such a mass, especially when we consider the nature of the 

 materials of which caddis-cases are built, for I should imagine that if the 

 mass had been weighed, the smaller half only would have been digestible, 

 even in the stomach of a duck, but I suppose the wild birds of this family 

 resemble their tame relations in their voracity. — G. B. Cokbin (Ringwood, 

 Hants). 



Notes from Dorsetshire. — During the past summer a pair of 

 Curlews, Numenius arquata, bred on the heath-land near Sandford 

 Bridge, Wareham, and another pair near the third milestone on the 

 Wareham and Bere road. I saw the brood of the latter (three in 

 number), with the old birds, on August 11th, nearly full-grown. Two 

 Whimbrels, N. phceopus, were shot on the shore of the Poole Estuary 

 on Sept. l(5th; on the 24th I saw two others in company with seven 

 Curlews. A pair of Redshanks nested and brought up four young ones, 

 in June last, at Arne. The garrulity of the parents endangered their 

 safety, but owing to the loneliness of the district they escaped. A pair of 

 Dippers, Cinclus aquaticus, bred on the banks of the Frome, between 

 Stoke and Bindon Abbey under a wooden bridge. This is its first recorded 

 occurrence on the eastern side of the county. Three Knots, a Pochard, three 

 Pintails, and two Grey Plover were shot by a Poole gunner on Sept. 8th. 



