ORNITHOLOGY OF OXFORDSHIRE. 225 



opportunity of making any notes during the long and terribly 

 severe frost which prevailed in the early part of this year. A 

 few notes came into my hands on my return. Two Little Auks 

 were picked up in an exhausted condition in January. One in 

 Port Meadow, near Oxford, for a note of which I am indebted to 

 Mr. Fowler ; the other, found at Charlbury, I examined in Mr. 

 Coombs's shop at Chipping Norton.* Mr. Coombs also showed 

 me a Great Grey Shrike, killed at Hook Norton in the winter of 

 1894-5, and two of four Spotted Woodpeckers procured in that 

 neighbourhood during the same period. About the first week in 

 February, as Mr. Melliar Foster-Melliar informs me, five or six 

 Wild Swans (probably Whoopers) came to their old haunt, just 

 above Bestmoor in the Cherwell valley, near North Aston. One 

 of the birds was described as being in the brownish dress of 

 immaturity. Mr. Fowler tells me that a Waxwing was seen by a 

 friend of his on Headington Hill, Oxford, in the early part of the 

 year. Two Snow Buntings were shot, and another seen, near 

 Crowmarsh on the 4th of February. When first observed (on the 

 2nd) they were working about, sometimes among the grass at the 

 sides of the road, and sometimes among the droppings on the 

 road. Mr. W. Newton, in a letter communicating these facts to 

 Mr. Fowler, added that he had a Snow Bunting (from his descrip- 

 tion, an adult bird) shot at Crowmarsh Battle about twenty years 

 ago, and another shot eight or ten years since. Some Snow 

 Buntings also occurred in Berkshire, but so close to our borders 

 that a notice of them comes fairly within the scope of these notes. 

 They were seen by Mr. Fowler just under Cumnor Hurst on the 

 6th and 7th. He writes that they were " so tame that they came 

 right up to my feet. . . . The thermometer that morning 

 was '3° below zero." Being out of England I was unable to 

 make any observations on Chaffinches at the end of the winter. 

 But I have a suspicion that the Chaffinches which spend the 

 winter here leave us about the end of January, or in the first 

 days of February. Their places are taken almost immediately 

 by others; at the same time I have more than once remarked that 

 the species had almost entirely disappeared for a few days just 

 before they were to be seen in their usual early spring abundance. 



* Since writing this I have heard of three picked up about the same 

 time at Henley-on-Thames. 



