287



Correspondence,



FEEDING WILD BIRDS ON QUAKER OATS.


A lady who for some years lived in a small house hidden away between

wooded hills in Herefordshire, had regularly fed the wild birds from her drawing

room window with dried Flake oats. I visited this house for the first time last

February, and a prettier sight I never saw. As soon as the sash window was

pushed up there was a frou-frou of innumerable wings, and down fluttered

Chaffinches, Great and Blue Tits, Robins and Greenfinches, Hedge Accentors,

whilst almost immediately the more sedate Blackbirds and Thrushes came

hopping from the bushes near at hand.


All the birds know (for they are still fed) the exact hours when the flake

oats will be thrown to them ; morning, noon and evening.


What struck me so much was the intense blue of the Blue Tits as they

flew down just under the window for flakes, as well as the magnificent colouring

of the Chaffinches. They certainly looked more brilliant than usual. Mr.

Headley, of Haileybury College, the brother of the lady mentioned, writes to

me—‘ ‘ I fear I cannot give an elaborate account of the birds my sister used to

“ feed. On the 16th of January, she wrote that there was a hard frost and snow,

“ the birds frantic for food. Many big and impudent Blackbirds, one bulky hen

“ continually fighting a cock bird. [She must have been a militant suffragette,

“for she often had the best of it in a tussle!] One Thrush much scared,

“ attracted into a quiet corner where it put away 110 flake oats.”


The lady bountiful also wrote— 1 ‘ Blackbirds are bold and impudent :

“ Robins, bright and perky ; Chaffinches are comfortable and important in their

■ ways ; Hedge Accentors quiet and cheerful, but the Thrush is sad.


“ The number of birds that assembled was astonishing. There was

“ quite a whirr of wings if there was a sudden scare and they all rose together.”


H. D. A.



EGYPTIAN PIED CHAT.


SIR,—I think the name used for the Egyptian Pied Chat, illustrated and

described in Mr. Astley’s article in the May number of the Magazine (p. 199)

should have been Saxicola lugens, and not S. leucomelcena *


The bird was named lugens by Lichtenstein in 1823. The name leu¬

comelcena was given by Burchell in his “ Travels in South Africa ” in 1822 to

the Chat which had already been named monticola by Vieillot in 1818—a bird

only inhabiting South Africa.


Besides being a synonym of a different bird, leucomelcena has the dis¬

advantage of being confusingly like leucomela, the name which Dresser used

for Saxicola lugens in “The Birds of Europe,” but which seems to have been

given by Pallas in 1770 to another Black-throated Chat, which again had already

been named Motacilla pleschanka by Lepechin in the same year.


Khartoum, 20/5/1913. A. L. BUTLER.



* S. leucomelcena was an oversight. S. leucomela is correct. ED.



