225 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



NORTHERN NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 



The Yorkshire Weekly Post (7-5-21) records the case of a 

 pair of rooks building a nest upon the chimney stack at Filey, 

 adjacent to a former rookery in the town, where the trees had 

 been felled to make room for a new building. The Bradford 

 Daily Telegraph (31-5-21) records an extraordinary site chosen 

 by a pair of blue tits for their nest. There is a roundabout 

 a hobby-horses in Shipley Glen. One of the horses had lost 

 its tail, and the hole where the tail ought to have been led 

 right into the interior of the horse. It was here the nest was 

 built, and during Whitsuntide, when hundreds of children 

 used the horses, the female bird sat tight on her eggs while 

 she was whizzed around. The eggs have since hatched, and 

 the parents are busy feeding the young. Last year a pair of 

 tits used the same site. 



RATS. 



Much has been heard in recent years about the damage 

 done by rats, the following from The Shooting Times (21-5-21) 

 will take some beating : — During the clearing of some badly 

 infested premises in Barnsley, where a defective sewer had 

 given rats an easy entrance into some shops and warehouses, 

 it was found that in one place the creatures had carried a heap 

 of monkey nuts sufficient to fill twenty-three baskets, not to 

 mention quantities of raisins and other foodstuffs, from a 

 grocers' shop into a drapery store. In a three-storeyed grain 

 store, the rats had packed the spaces between the floor boards 

 with corn of all kinds, sufficient, at a rough estimate, to fill 

 two hundred to three hundred sacks. 



WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. 



An echo of the destruction of the White-tailed Eagle in 

 the Peak District is that Ernest Dearden, gamekeeper to 

 Lord Edmund Talbot, was fined £1 and 2 guineas costs, and 

 the bird confiscated, for, as one paper quaintly puts it, shooting 

 a sea-eagle, the pet of the Duke of Devonshire's keeper in the 

 adjoining estate. — R.F. 



' FISHERIES IN THE GREAT WAR, 



Being the report on Sea Fisheries for the years 1915, 1916, 

 1917 and 1918 of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, 

 Parts I and 2, xxxix. + i95 pages, 2/- net.' From the for- 

 midable character of the above title one might assume that 

 this particular volume is one of the usual technical reports 

 issued by the Government. Certainly it deals with various 

 aspects of the Fisheries question so far as it relates to the 

 Seas around the British Islands, but the volume contains a 

 most fascinating report of the doings of the Fishermen durirg 

 the war, which is as entertaining as any novel we have 



1921 July 1 



Q 



