NOTES AND QUERIES. 259 
out; they fly very rapidly, and go away across the marshes that are 
opposite my house for some considerable distance. The other evening, 
immediately after their flight, I walked nearly a mile into the marshes to 
see if IT could meet with them, but they were either too high to be observed 
or had flown further away. As we have been favoured with bright sun- 
shine and fine evenings, it might appear that their distant flight was in 
consequence, but they have flown away exactly the same the last two 
evenings that have been dulland wet. I have observed them at the same 
time of the year on previous years, and have noticed them as late as 
September. A few years ago (April, 1884) my son cut off the dead branch 
of an old walnut tree, in the hollow of which we found eight Bats of this 
species that were all males: it would be very curious if the males hybernate 
in one place and the females in another. [On this point see Zool. 
1874, p. 4194, Ep.] These Bats are remarkably uniform in size and 
appearance ; the three I shot the other evening measured each exactly 
fourteen inches in expanse of wings. I have noticed also, in my neigh- 
bourhood, the Serotine Bat, which rather exceeds in size the former 
species; and the Pipistrelle, which is the common small Bat of the 
neighbourhood,—one of the first to appear in the evening all through 
the summer months, and even in mild weather in winter. The other 
Bat often met with is the Long-eared Bat, which is very particular in 
its choice of evenings for flight, or else comes out later; it is found in 
less abundance here than the Pipistrelle, but I have met with it in the 
wooded parts of Kent in old houses, in such abundance that you might 
hive a hatful of them as they hung down clustered together from the rafters 
of the house. Ihave heard of the Greater Horse-shoe Bat in Hast Kent, 
but have not myself met with it.—Grorez Dowxer; Stourmouth House, 
Wingham, Kent. [It has been procured at Dartmouth and in Canterbury 
Cathedral.— Ep. ] 
BIRDS. 
Peculiarity in the Bill of the Norfolk Plover.—In ‘ The Field’ of 
Dec. 4th, 1880, and in his ‘ Rough Notes on British Birds,’ Mr. E. T. Booth 
has pointed out that the male Norfolk Plover, Zdicnemus crepitans, when 
adult, has for a short time in the spring two small knobs at the base of the 
upper mandible. In May, 1872, he met with two birds thus adorned on 
the Sussex downs. One of them is stuffed in his collection at Brighton, 
and a figure of the head is given in ‘ The Field’ (/.c.) and in ‘ Rough 
Notes.’ No other naturalist seems to have observed this feature in the 
Norfolk Plover, though what may be called an item of evidence is mentioned 
in ‘ The Zoologist’ for 1882 (p. 295), which, so far as it goes, is favourable 
to Mr. Booth’s theory. The Norfolk Plover being in the Schedule of 
protected birds, it has been almost impossible (and very rightly so) to obtain 
examples, but two having been killed by hawks during the first days of 
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