128 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



talons into the body of a fine guinea hen. We, who witnessed the 

 " coup " — cudgel in hand — took part in the fracas, and only af- 

 ter some wild and random striking and pursuing, and sensational 

 shrieking on our part^ was the sanguinary aggressor driven away. 



It may serve to give an idea of the velocity of the flight of birds 

 of prey, when swooping at an object, to mention an incident that 

 occurred several summers ago, in the garden of one of our neigh- 

 bors. A number of half grown tame ducks were wandering among 

 the vegetables, among which rank weeds had been growing, but 

 some of which had been mown down with a scythe a day or two be- 

 fore the date of our incident. A large hawk was seen suddenly to 

 strike down at one of the ducklings, but striking its breast against 

 one of the prostrate stems of the big weeds, was firmly impaled 

 thereby, and notwithstanding its violent struggles was soon captured, 

 when the force of the impact was found to have driven the bayonet- 

 like weed stem lengthwise through the abdomen of the bird, and 

 protruding some distance beyond the caudal extremity of the body. 

 The swoop of the shrike is equally impetuous in its less powerful 

 sphere, for a number of instances have occurred within one's ken in 

 this district where cage birds have been struck at, but where the ag- 

 gressor was killed or stunned in the onset by intervening cage wires, 

 or by window panes. A curious instance of the capture of the cun- 

 ning crow who formed one of a group of ornithic marauders that 

 lately trespassed in a field of ripening corn two and half miles dis- 

 tant from here. On the crows being suddenly interrupted by the 

 farmer, one bird in his precipitancy got his feet firmly entangled in 

 the meshes of the twine-like stems of the wild bindweed (convolvu- 

 lous arvensis), or polygonum sagittalum, and was clubbed to death 

 as the penalty of his freebooting activity, or else of his clumsiness. 



The flocks of snow buntings have been more frequent visitors 

 and also more numerous this winter than is usual about here. One 

 individual of this species was shot by an acquaintance a short time 

 ago, and the body of the bird was found to be almost a perfect mass 

 of fat. These birds were reported of about here in the month of 

 November last, and are now seen on the fields around Hatchley 

 almost every day. One flock seen yesterday was estimated to con- 

 sist of scarcely less than a thousand individual birds. And what a 

 beautiful ornament do these gracefully moving objects lend to the 



