44 Fetch : Xotcs on Holdci'iicss Birds. 



remaining five on btli January, but could not g"et near them ; 

 they appeared to be mutes. Two Brent Geese were shot near 

 the head of Lambwath stream in November 1897. The VViij;eon 

 may be heard whistling" over Aldboroug;h as late as April. 

 Pochard, Scaup, and Mallard are common on the H umber in 

 the winter, and flocks of Scoter may be seen ofif the coast 

 from Aug"ust. Of our resident ducks, the Sheldrake breeds on 

 Spurn, and is reported to have nested in haystacks on Sunk 

 Island ; the Common Pochard maintains a well-known colony 

 on Hornsea Mere, and the IMallard nests on the banks oi ponds, 

 etc., throughout the district. Teal and Shoveller are often met at 

 the end of July, and the latter, as in other districts, is increasing. 



Occasionally Merganser are founci in the broads on Cherry 

 Cob Sands (December 1899), and the same locality provided 

 another Holderness record of the Stormy Petrel in November 

 1893, when one was shot while flying down a ditch. The Little 

 Grebe was formerly common on these ponds and sufficiently 

 numerous inland to acquire a local name, but of late years it 

 has been much rarer, though a flourishing colony has recently 

 been established near Hedon. I have never found the eggs in 

 March ; the usual time is about the first week in May, and in 

 1899, when Mr. Richardson, of Sands House, kept a sharp 

 look-out for it, the first eggs found there hatched off on i6th 

 July. The Crested Grebe still manages to exist on Hornsea 

 Mere, but, like the Lesser Tern, the colony is too well known to 

 flourish. The Common and Arctic Terns do not breed with us 

 but pass along the coast on migration, and the Black Tern, 

 which formerly bred in Norfolk and is now a regular spring 

 visitor to that county, may often be seen at Spurn. 



Last year (1901) a Blackbird with a white tail, except for 

 a few centre feathers, frequented Thorngumbald (August), and 

 another with white tail coverts and white feathers in wings and 

 back was seen at West Newton (loth August) ; white Sparrows 

 are frequently seen at Newton Garth, near Paull. Mr. J. A. 

 Fisher, of Aldborough, has several abnormall}-coloured Larks 

 which he has shot there. I have seen two clutches of Blackbirds' 

 eggs in which all the eggs were a uniform blue ; in one case the 

 nest was very slight, practically only a platform of hay. A Lap- 

 wing's e.gg, with a bluish-white ground, and freckled with small 

 purple and gray spots, was found floating in a pool on Saltend, 

 13th April 1898; and a Whitethroat's egg in my possession, taken 

 in 1889 from a nest in which all the other eggs were normal, 

 measures '5 by '3 inches. 



X;Uiiralist, 



