NOTES AND QUERIES. 233 



but, taking him from his writing to be a field-nataralist of some experience, 

 the wonder in my mind is that it did not occur to him to connect these two 

 facts together, because they seem to me to be cause and effect. The Jay 

 and Magpie are great hunters of hedgerow and plantation, and have a keen 

 eye for eggs, as every one knows. They are not seen much on the ground, 

 but in hedges, bushes and low trees continually. Except in the acorn 

 season, I hardly remember to have seen Jays on the ground. But from 

 the places they frequent, the big white eggs of the Pigeons, placed con- 

 spicuously (from above) on a flat, dark-coloured platform, catch the eye of a 

 Jay or Magpie at once. Indeed I have long regarded these two birds as the 

 natural and chief check upon the Wood Pigeon. The Turtle Dove, whose 

 nesting arrangements are similar to those of the Wood Pigeon's, is very 

 much on the increase in this neighbourhood. I counted, a little more than 

 a mouth ago, nearly thirty Wood Pigeons' and Turtle Doves' nests of last 

 year (they are too flimsy to last much longer) in a small piece of a wood of 

 certainly not two acres. It is not unusual to see thirty or more Turtle 

 Doves rise from an acre or so of tares, and this at the end of May — not in 

 autumn, when they are collecting to leave us, and when much greater 

 numbers may be seen together. Blackbirds and Thrushes, again, are a 

 great plague to gardens in some districts. T do not think that we should 

 suffer from an excessive number of these, or of Pigeons either, if the Jay 

 and Magpie, now pitilessly, and senselessly, harried towards extinction, were 

 allowed to perform their legitimate function in the complex system of 

 nature. No doubt they do at times what we are pleased, with a sad want 

 of judicial impartiality, to call harm ; but I do not think that, even on that 

 account, too keen preservers of game are justified in relentlessly persecuting 

 Jays and Magpies to the death because at times they expect their wages. — 

 Henry H. Slater (Thornhaugh Rectory, Wansford, Northamptonshire). 



Nesting of Short-eared Owl in Essex. — I have been much interested 

 in finding a Short-eared Owl's nest on my island (Northey, Maldon), with 

 eleven young ones, three out of the nest, two good snappers, and two just 

 hatched, the rest graduated in pairs. Although I write " nest," there 

 really is none, properly so called, the young being on the bare grass against 

 a tussock. My man said two of the eggs were unhatched on May 20th. 

 There are eighteen colts on the marsh, and the way the old Owls "go for " 

 these my man says " is a caution," as good as any dog he ever saw ! — 

 Edward A. Fitch (Maldon, Essex). 



Great Skua and Black-throated Diver in Somersetshire.— I have 

 seen a Great Skua, Stercorarius cataractes, which was killed by Mr. W. 

 Haselem at Berrow, near Burnham, in Dec. 1883. This, so far as I am 

 aware, is the first recorded occurrence of this bird in Somerset. A Black- 

 throated Diver, Colymbus arcticus, immature, was killed near Burnham on 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XX. JUNE, 1896. T 



