Ornithological Notes. By George Bolam. 349 



On 1st June 1889, I watched a party of from fifteen to twenty Crossbills 

 in the large wood at Kyloe in Northumberland. They appeared to be mostly 

 young birds attended and being fed by their parents, and had probably 

 been bred in the immediate vicinity. They were busily engaged amongst 

 the fir branches, one or two of them ever and anon sallying out of the tree 

 and flying round, only to return again ; and one bird, which must have 

 been an old male in dull green plumage, sat for some time upon the top of 

 a tree close to us, and whistled in a most pleasing and quite musical 

 manner. 



Jay. Gamilus glandarius, Linnaeus. 



I was informed by a gentleman, who is well acquainted with this species 

 in the county of Durham, where it is still pretty numerous, and who was 

 not therefore likely to have been mistaken, that one day during the pro- 

 tracted snowstorm of December and January 1890-91, a Jay flew close 

 over his head near New Water Haugh, about two miles west of Berwick. 

 The traps and gun of the gamekeeper have long since annihilated this fine 

 bird in Northumberland, and it is only very rarely that one straggles north 

 of about Morpeth. In that neighbourhood, and to the south and west of 

 it, a few [lairs still manage to exist; and in the Duke's park at Alnwick 

 there has been an occasional attempt at nesting during the last few years. 

 1 saw one that had been killed near Acklington about the year 1880, and 

 was looked upon as the last of its race ; and the keeper at Harehope Hall 

 killed one at his pheasant feed, where it was pilfering the Indian corn, in 

 the autumn of 1883 or 1884. 



Near Longframlington I was informed by a young friend that he some- 

 times finds a nest, but that though " father does not allow them to be 

 killed upon his farm, all the neighbours do, and they are getting scarce." 



Wryneck, hjnx torquilla, Linnaeus. 



About the second week in August 1890, a Wryneck was shot near 

 Smeafield, and came into the possession of Mr Chas. E. Purvis of Alnwick, 

 who kindly sent me particulars and showed me the specimen. 



In the first number of " The Annals of Scottish Natural History," a 

 quarterly journal, issued in January last, and which has taken the place 

 of the old "Scottish Naturalist," Mr Wm. Evans, F.R.S.E., records the 

 simultaneous detection of foui- examples on the east coast of Scotland in 

 the autumn of 1891 ; one of which was picked up in a dying condition, at 

 Thornton Loch, a few miles east of Dunbar, on 20th August, the others 

 being from the Pentland Skerries, Thirkwall, and near Thurso. 



Gre.\t Spotted Woodpecker. Dendrocopus major, Linnaeus. 

 Has been unusually plentiful in the district during the last few years, 

 and has probably nested in several localities. In 1886 I purchased an 

 immature bird, which had been shot at Tweedmouth early in November ; 

 and about the same time one was killed near Hexham, and another seen 

 at Twizell House, near Belford. la December a young female was killed 

 Is 



