102 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



[On referring to Witchell's 'Fauna of Gloucestershire,' 1892, we find 

 no mention of the Eider-duck as a visitor to that county. — Ed.] 



Shoveller in Somersetshire. — A fishmonger in Bath showed me a 

 pair of young Shovellers, Anas clypeata, male and female, which had been 

 shot near Keynsham about the beginning of January last. As I have never 

 heard of these birds having been shot near this locality before, the fact may 

 be worth recording. — C, B. Horsbrugh (4, Richmond Hill, Bath). 



[In Cecil Smiths 'Birds of Somersetshire' (p. 477), the Shoveller is 

 mentioned as " a rather rare occasional visitor to the county, making its 

 appearance generally in the winter and early spring." — Ed.] 



Abnormal Nesting of the Willow Wren. — I have seen mentioned in 

 'The Field' and elsewhere that the Willow Warbler sometimes, though 

 rarely, nests in ivy on old walls. As the nesting-season of 1896 will soon 

 be with us, I should like to put before readers of ' The Zoologist ' a strange 

 instance of this, which took place during my nest-hunting experience. 

 Some years ago, in 1884, I think, I was shown a nest of the Willow 

 Wren in a position such as I have indicated, in the ivy mantling the 

 ruins of an old church. The nest was inside the building. The eggs, of 

 which five were laid, were very brightly spotted. A similar nest was built, 

 in exactly the same place, in Ma\ T -June, 1893, but none, so far as I know, 

 in the intervening years. Is it not rather strange that these birds should 

 have come back to their old nesting-place after an interval of nine years, 

 assuming that they were the same pair, the truth of which, however, I had 

 no means of certifying ? The eggs in the latter case were very ordinary 

 specimens of the Willow Wren, so that there is practically little doubt 

 as to the identity of the birds. In connection with this I would like to 

 mention another strange nesting-place of the Willow Warbler, which came 

 under my notice in 1884. Two of the nests of this species were built in 

 the upper part of a hawthorn hedge. That they were nests of the Willow 

 Wren is the only conclusion I can come to, for I do not think we have 

 the Chiffchaff or the Wood Wren in the district to which my notes refer 

 — on the north shore of the Solway ; and the nearest nesting-place of the 

 Grasshopper Warbler to this particular spot is in the woods along Kirkcud- 

 bright Bay, some miles off. In any case it is a very unlikely situation for 

 the Grasshopper Warbler. The nests were not at a great distance from 

 each other, domed ; and the eggs were lightly spotted with reddish yellow. 

 The hedge was beside a wood frequented by a few Willow Wrens ; at 

 the root of the hedge a rabbit-warren ; the place a probable haunt of 

 Weasels. It is just possible that this last consideration had something to 

 do with the situation chosen. — J. W. Payne (Edinburgh). 



Hybrid Linnet and Siskin. — At a meeting of the Linnean Society, 

 held at Burlington House on Feb. '28th, Mr. John Young exhibited a 

 mounted specimen of a hybrid between a Siskin, Carduelis uphills, and 



