Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c, 165 
SiRs^ — Two Eared Grebes [Podicipes nigricollis)^ male and 
female, were shot od a large pond about three miles north of 
this village on the 19th of September, 1899. They had not 
quite assumed the winter dress, and in the male the sides of 
the head were still tinged with a dark rufous colour. They 
had not been seen on the pond previously and were clearly 
on migration ; but, for several reasons, I think that they had 
passed the summer in this country and were not merely 
migrants which had recently arrived from abroad. The date 
is full early for foreign birds to have reached the middle of 
England. It is unlikely that two immigrant individuals 
(presumably a pair) should have wandered in company so far 
inland as^ Oxfordshire, where this Grebe is very rare as a 
visitor — far rarer than the Sclavonian Grebe. The only 
connexion between the pond they were killed upon and the 
Thames is a small brook, a branch of one of the tributary 
streams which flow into the Cherwell many miles above 
Oxford. Even the Sclavonian Grebe, which reaches Oxford- 
shire by way of the Thames, and is not very uncommon on 
that river above Oxford, is hardly known on these remote 
subtributary streams in the north of the county. I think 
also that this pair of Grebes were not non-breeding birds, 
hatched in 1898 and just over their autumnal moult, because 
in that case neither of them would have had any sign 
of rufous colour on the head, this colour not being exhibited 
by the young bird in the first summer following the year in 
which it was hatched (I conclude this is so from the exami- 
nation of a bird shot in Anglesea on the 1st of August), and 
not being assumed at the autumn moult. 
The organs of reproduction in the Oxfordshire birds were 
small, but this is usually the case with birds in early autumn. 
The only sign of (possible) immaturity shown by these 
examples was the colour of the irides — golden yellow ; but 
the colour of the irides of Grebes is notoriously very variable, 
and may possibly change with the seasons. 
It seems, therefore, reasonable to suppose that this pair 
of Eared Grebes had bred, or had attempted to breed, on 
one of the large reservoirs of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, 
