186 president's address. 



rarity that can be mentioned to the Club as having established 

 a claim of domicile in onr grounds at Dunston Hill, situated as 

 they are so near to the populous villages that lie towards the 

 Tyne in the lands below. But the hawfinch, loxia coccothraustes, 

 has visited us, though at long intervals of years. On the last 

 occasion five birds came together, which, finding but few berries 

 on the yew trees, departed again next day, with the exception 

 of one, a female, which perhaps lost the others. She received 

 the protection that was in readiness for them all, and remained 

 through the whole winter, feeding on haws and keeping com- 

 pany with blackbirds and redwings. We have now a greatly 

 increased assortment of yews, so that, I hope, hawfinches may 

 return and rest securely here. 



We used to have jays in plenty, and could now easily re- 

 colonize with young ones; but I hesitate, since they plunder 

 sadly the nests of thrushes and blackbirds. A very little pro- 

 tection will suffice for jays; so crafty and watchful are they 

 against all intrusive strangers who might come in quest of them. 

 Indeed their cries of suspicion and alarm give valuable notice to 

 all, whenever trespassers are in the woodlands. The jay is be- 

 coming so rare that to afford it some countenance almost becomes 

 a duty, when one has abjured pheasants as inadmissible in a 

 populous neighbourhood. For it is on behalf of pheasants and 

 their eggs that the beautiful jays are proscribed from parks and 

 pleasure grounds, with so little compunction. 



Then let us hope that e'en the jay- 

 May claim, on Tyne, her holiday. 



At the close of the late most trying and exhausting winter it 

 is a gladness to see the peewit resume his gambols, and to hail our 

 happy aerial Mends the skylarks in yet undiminished numbers. 

 They must have flown far since autumn; as far as Devon perhaps. 

 I have long thought the heel-claw of the skylark and its con- 

 geners one of the clear demonstrations of beneficent design in 

 organisation, to enable ground-roosting diurnal birds, of small 

 specific gravity, to pass the night, not squatting, but crouching, 

 and fronting the storm, without being either blown away or 



