24 CORDEAUX: ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM HUMBER DISTRICT. 
4th of December one, a female, was shot at Ulceby, in a field 
close to his house, by Mr. Frederick Pearson ; and the same day, 
at Wooton, within a short distance of the same place, a Little 
Auk (Afergulus alle) was picked up. 
Fieldfare (Zurdus pilaris (Linn. )). Oct. 15th, first seen. Mr. Haigh 
writing in ‘The Field’ says, that at this date he flushed from 
a clump of bushes near Tetney Lock about one hundred Field- 
fares, a score of Mistletoe Thrushes, as many Blackbirds, and 
a few Thrushes and Redwings. On Oct. 2oth, 21st, there was 
an immense arrival of old birds on the Holderness and Lincoln- 
shire coast. On Nov. 25th, I was sheltering from a heavy cold 
rain from the eastward beneath the boughs of a low-growing fir 
on the side of the sea-cliff, near Folkestone, when a flock of 
fifteen old Fieldfares came in direct from the sea, from the S.E., 
dropping in perfect silence into the rough scrub. How 
charmingly they looked in their clean, bright, unsullied plumage 
fresh in from the salt sea; delicate tints of ash-grey and hazel- 
olde 
a) 
The rich dark-brown patch on the side of the breast is very 
plainly seen in flight at a considerable distance, and will alone 
serve to distinguish them on the wing from Mistletoe Thrushes. 
A very light movement of my part, and, with a low chuck-a-chuck, 
they rose together going inland over the cliff-top. 
Snow-Bunting. (Plectrophanes nivalis (Linn.)). Oct. roth. I saw 
a small flight this afternoon amongst rough shingle, evidently 
newly arrived birds, and more inclined to trust to their feet than 
to take wing. The rough banks and beds of many-coloured 
gravel on the Yorkshire coast are always favourite haunts of 
Snow-Bunting. Everywhere, since last this way, there is 
evidence of change, wreck, ruin, and waste, and an increasing 
encroachment on the cultivated land—year by year—now more, 
and now less, the seaside farms decrease in area. I know one 
small freeholder who all his life has been tilling the few fields 
of his little farm under the very shadow of the sand-dune, where 
through the long summer day you may listen to the song of the 
bonnie ‘ bent’ linnets and the ‘lilt-lilt’ of ascending larks. The 
materials of the wooden out-buildings around his cottage are 
all of wreck wood, and worked into the structures we read 
‘Perseverance of Shields,’ ‘Vesta of Goole,’ and such like 
relics suggestive of the perils of the deep sea. Some day with 
a northerly gale and full spring-tide the hungry sea will make 
a clean sweep of homestead and fields. Still the old man sticks 
to his wooden one-horsed plough, hoping that matters may 
Naturalist, 
