42 CORDEAUX: BIRD-NOTES FROM THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 
Alauda arborea (L.). Wood Lark. Mr. Haigh writes that 
he had seen a small party of four in a stubble-field near the park 
at Grainsby Hall, and had shot one. He thinks he has seen them 
before in winter, but had never obtained an example. They 
were easily distinguishable at a very considerable distance from 
a flock of about fifty larks, which, they joined on being put up, 
both by their different flight and short tail. 
Sylvia nisoria (Bechstein). Barred Warbler. The example 
shot near Kilnsea, on November 13th, as already recorded by 
me in the ‘ Naturalist,’ is now in the collection of Mr. J. H 
Gurney, of Keswick Hall, Norwich. 
Sula bassana (L.). Gannet. I saw several off the 
headland at Flamborough in the last fortnight in November, 
and many were reported at sea by the fishermen. On 
January 2nd Mr. Hewetson, junr., saw from twenty to thirty 
flying up and down the Humber side near the Spurn. This 
they did all the afternoon. Some few were in the dark 
plumage. 
In Mr. Whitlock’s interesting ‘ Bird-Notes from the Mid-Trent 
Valley in 1893’ he refers to a paper written by me on ‘ The 
Migration of the Yellow Wagtail,’ which appeared in the ‘ Zoologist,’ 
1892, pp. 389-391, and suggests that the flocks of this species seen 
coming in direct from the Has#—that is, the sea—to the Lincolnshire 
coast may have been such as had been travelling down the 
Holderness coast. This is certainly not the case, as all flocks of 
birds passing from the Spurn towards Lincolnshire move from 
nearly north to south, or directly across the mouth of the 
Humber. Flocks observed coming in from N.E., E., or S.E., come 
in from the sea, a fact which I have constantly had opportunities of 
verifying in the autumn, both on sea and land, for well nigh forty 
years. 
_ As a rule, the small summer visitants to northern and central 
Europe, such of them as reach the east coast of Great Britain in the 
autumn passage, do not pass inland or cross the country, but follow 
the coast-line to the south. This is the case with the Ring Ouzels, 
Wheatears, Redstarts, Willow Wrens, Pied Flycatchers, the subject 
of this notice, and a great many other small species far too numerous 
to mention ; and so much is this the rule that an observer residing 
a few miles inland will be ignorant of the immense movement going 
forward within so short a distance. 
That there is a line of migration, more or less distinctly marked, 
for our winter visitors passing inland along the Trent valley is highly 
Naturalist, 
