Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union: Annual Report, 1915. 35 
Turtle Dove has nested in Cottingley Wood this year. If this 
can be confirmed it will be an interesting record for Upper 
Airedale. The pair of Stonechats reported by Mr. Bolam as 
being seen about a mile and a half on the main road south-east 
of Settle in the week prior to the Y.N.U. excursion to that 
place (The Naturalist 1915, p. 260) was unfortunately not con- 
firmed by any of the members who attended the Union’s 
meeting. The sudden and unexplainable decrease amongst 
the previously ever-increasing local Starlings, reported two 
years ago, has not varied much since then. They certainly 
have not decreased further ; probably they are very slightly 
increasing again. A reference may be made to three ‘ recovered ’ 
Black-headed Gulls (British Birds, Vol. VIIL., p. 217). One 
ringed as a young bird near Lake Bala, Merionethshire, was 
found dead in the breeding season at the Hebden Bridge © 
gullery, Blackstone Edge, three years later—i.e., in 1914. 
More remarkable was a bird of this species ringed at the 
Egton gullery, and found seven months later in the island of 
Flores, in the Azores. Another bird ringed as a nestling at 
Ravenglass, was found dead four years and one month later at 
the Stanedge Moor gullery. As the Black-headed Gull is a com- 
paratively recent addition to our West Riding nesting species 
these data should give a clue to the origin of our gulleries. 
Mr. Walter Greaves reports that he examined a female 
Hen Harrier which had been killed on Langfield Moor on 
October 13th, 1915; a Manx Shearwater was caught alive 
at Heptonshall on October 3rd, 1914, and a female Common 
Scoter was seen on Fly Flats reservoir on July 24th, 1915. 
Last year we endeavoured to examine the data of a reported 
British Black-headed Bunting (Emberiza melanocephala) sup- 
posed to have been captured near Halifax, and sold by a 
Halifax bird dealer. This year the same dealer has been 
caught red-handed in offering a newly-caught Little Bunting 
taken near Ripon, which proved to be a common South African 
cage-bird, viz., the Cape Canary (Alario alario L.), a species 
not known in a feral state in Europe. The deceptions of this 
bird dealer have already been exposed in The Naturalist, so 
that further comment here is unnecessary. 
Mr. Thomas Roose informs me that one of the Duke of 
Devonshire’s gamekeepers brought three strange Wild Ducks 
to the Estate Office at Bolton Abbey. He had shot them on 
Aked’s dam, at West End (Washburndale), in the last week of 
October. Mr. Roose identified them as Gadwall (Anas strepera 
L.), two ducks and one drake. 
Mr. Roose had also watched a solitary Crossbill for some 
_time near to Bolton Abbey on Sept. 3oth. 

1916 Jan. 1. 
