i84 Field Note. 



boulder-clay in the county, hard and very tough and closely 

 packed with well-scratched stones, mostly local, but with a fair 

 number of rocks from the Lake District, such as Shap granite 

 and the micro-granite of Threlkeld. It is evident that these 

 ate relics of a great and extensive glaciation separated from 

 the stage represented by the York and Escrick moraines by 

 an interval many times greater than that separating the later 

 glacial phase from the present day, even though a generous 

 allowance must be made for the greater activity of sub-cerial 

 denudation during the Ice Age.' 



: o : 



Nidification of the Spotted Flycatcher. — Many bird- 

 men will be overhauling their nesting boxes at this time of 

 year ; great-tits, blue-tits, coal-tits, marsh-tits, redstarts, will, 

 no doubt, be catered for ; but not many naturahsts think of 

 assisting that true little friend of the gardener — the Spotted 

 Flycatcher ; it is true this bird can generally find a niche in a 

 creeper or wall in which to fix a neSt, but it does appreciate a 

 little human assistance as the following instance shows. In 

 the late spring of 1916 a pair of Spotted Flycatchers took up 

 its abode in the garden of my house at Ripon, which stood at 

 the end of a row of houses ; they searched eagerly for a suitable 

 nesting site, and could find nothing better than the top of a 

 spout under the eaves ; I watched them trying to fix a grass 

 foundation in the perforated zinc which covered the spout, and 

 realized that it would be a poor situation in wet weather ; so 

 I made a small box with a roof over it, and fixed it on the wall 

 of the house about six feet below the spout ; I then swept off 

 the beginnings of the nest from the spout. The very next 

 day, the flycatchers commenced a nest in the box, and within 

 a week the first egg was laid ; on June 2nd the hen began 

 incubating five eggs ; unfortunately (I believe through the 

 interference of sparrows) one egg was broken on June 3rd, 

 and the neSt and eggs were deserted. After two days, as the 

 birds did not return to the nest, I cleared out the box ; then 

 the flycatchers, unable perhaps to find another suitable site, 

 visited the box, and finding it ' swept and garnished ' straight- 

 way began to build in it again, and on June 20th the hen was 

 sitting on four eggs ; this time all went well and four young 

 birds were brought off. The following year, when I moved 

 into Bolton Abbey Rectory, I brought the box with me and 

 set it up six feet from the ground on the outside of the beautiful 

 old porch ; a pair of spotted flycatchers at once took possession 

 and hatched off their brood in it successfully, and this in spite 

 of the fact that there are several creepers growing up the front 

 of the house with many possible nesting sites. — Cecil F. 

 ToMLiNSON, Rector of Bolton Abbey. 



Naturalist, 



