Notes on the Birds of Stobo. By John Thomson. 549 



apparently of any possibility of your following its movements. If disturbed 

 during the day where trees are available, it almost constantly settles 

 again close up to the trunk at the junction of a branch. Warm sunshine 

 seems to arouse it from its diurnal slumbers, for it is usually when there 

 is such that its note is heard in the day-time. Though I have not observed 

 the Short-eared Owl, it may possibly at times visit us. Oue was shot in 

 October 1883 at Kingsmeadows, near Peebles. 



I had a good opportunity of observing a Grey Shrike in the parish in 

 February 1883. In October and November J 882 three were shot in the 

 vicinity of Biggar. 



The Great Tit probably pairs for life. In January of this year, (1S86) 

 when there had been no previous mild weather to induce pairing, and on 

 a day when there was deep snow and bright sunshine, I saw a male and a 

 female frequenting a hole of a tree for a short time, evidently in conjugal 

 relationship; and in the depth of winter I once saw one shot from beside 

 another which flew around its fallen mate in the greatest distress. They 

 are, too, met with in pairs often during winter. This bird has a penchant 

 for hive bees, and is perhaps the worst feathered foe the apiarian in this 

 country has to contend with. In justice to it, however, it should be said 

 that its depredations are chiefly, if not entirely committed in winter, when 

 other insect food is scarce. It is then often seen flitting about the hives, 

 or searching on the ground in front of them for dead bees which have been 

 dragged out and dropped overboard by those cleanly and orderly colonists. 

 When the bees are astir the Oxoye is in a state of great alacrity, moving 

 briskly about and uttering his note of " twite-e-twite ;" and when a hapless 

 bee which has alighted to rest, is espied, it is adroitly seized and carried 

 off. The intestinal parts of the insect only are consumed, and the rest 

 dropped under a perch to which the bird will return again and again with 

 the bees it captures ; its object in this being doubtless to preveut the 

 possibility of the same one being picked up by mistake a second time, 

 which w r ould happen — particularly when there is snow on the ground, and 

 the bees, enticed out by warm sunshine, have alighted on the snow in 

 great numbers — were they left scattered about. Several hundreds are 

 sometimes collected to one spot. Twice or thrice I have known this 

 veritable Bee-Eater dislodge a piece of cloth which had beeu stuffed firmly 

 into the doorway of a hive. 



The Blue Tit has been classed among the enemies of the bee, but I 

 believe it to be free from guilt in this matter. Suspicions of it may have 

 been aroused when seen pecking at the straw covering of hives. Like the 

 Greenfinch, Wood-pigeon, and some others, this bird assumes a variation 

 in its ordinary flight at the breeding season : when taking short flights 

 from one tree to another it soars, or gently quivers its wings, for a few 

 yards before alighting. During the mild days that often succeed the 

 breaking up of a winter storm numbers of insects are abroad on the wing. 

 To the capture of these the Blue Tit devotes a great part of its time, 

 perching itself in a prominent position and keeping an outlook for them. 

 On seizing the insect in the air, it unconsciously at the same time darts 



