Birds. 2191 



derland, a good practical naturalist, writes me to say, that while on a botanical stroll, 

 on the 11th instant, to the above place and Ryhope, a village by the sea-shore, his at- 

 tention was called by a friend to a singular bird roosting on a bush, which proved to 

 be a fine hoopoe : it was chased away by some boys that were near ; and though dili- 

 gent search has been made for it, it has not been since heard of. — Joseph Duff; 

 Bishops Auckland, June 19, 1848. 



Occurrence of the White Stork (Ciconia alba) near York. — A very fine specimen of 

 the white stork, a male bird, was shot on the 18th of last May, by a small farmer on 

 lord Wenlock's property, near the village of Riccall, about nine miles from the city 

 of York, and came the same day into the hands of Mr. Graham, my bird-stuffer, at 

 York, by whom it has been set up, and is now in my collection. — W. M. E. Milner ; 

 75, Eaton Place, July, 1848. 



Occurrence of the Black Tern (Sterna nigra), #•<?., near Oxford.— Two adult male 

 specimens of the black tern were killed in Port Meadow, near Oxford, during the 

 month of May : there are other examples from the same locality, preserved in the 

 Ashmolean Museum. I may perhaps add that several gray shrikes (Lanius excubitor) 

 were obtained in this county during the past winter. — H. Roundell ; Wells, June 10, 

 1848. 



Provincial Names of Birds. — Mr. Evans, in an interesting notice of the Leicester- 

 shire names of birds (Zool. 2136), remarks, that in that county the barn owl is known 

 to the natives as a ' padge ' or ' padge owl ; ' here, in Warwickshire, it is generally 

 called a ' madge ' or ' madge owlet.' ' Madge,' too, I may remark, is, so to say, the 

 vocative case of owl, just as ' puss ' is of cat. The great and lesser spotted woodpecker, 

 which, with Mr. Evans, I regret to say are every year becoming less frequent, are 

 known by the most appropriate name of ' pump-borer,' a name derived, no doubt, 

 from the similarity of the extraordinary sound made by the bird in the spring to that 

 of the boring of a pump -tree with a large auger. Herons are not only very commonly 

 called * cranes ' (as rooks are called ' crows ' *) but also ' moll-herons,' or rather • moll- 

 yerns.' In Warwickshire, as elsewhere, the swift is a ' jack squeeler,' the bullfinch a 

 1 nope,' the chaffinch a ' piefinch,' the redstart a ' fi retail,' or ' firytail,' and the wryneck 

 the ' cuckoo mate.' The genus titmouse is, for the most part, lumped together under 

 one common denomination of torn-tit.' The long-tailed tit, however, has its own dis- 

 tinctive appellation, and besides bearing the name of ' miller's thumb,' is also called 

 a ' bombarrel ' or ' bumbarrel,' the derivation of which name I will not pretend to 

 suggest.f A whole host of our little summer birds of passage — whitethroats, willow- 

 wrens, &c. — frequently pass indiscriminately under the name of ' chates ' or ' chaits.' 

 The country people here call the great crested grebe ' hornigull diver.' Within the 

 last half year I have been amused at hearing woodcocks termed ' woodsuckers,' — by no 

 means an inappropriate name ; but the person who used this name was not, I believe, 



* In the north of England, I am informed that rooks are called ' crows,' and the 

 carrion crow a ' daupe • or ' dawp.' 



f It has just occurred to me, since the above was written, that this name may have 

 arisen from a fanciful resemblance which the nest of the bird, with its little round hole 

 for an entrance, bears to a barrel with the bung-hole left open ; in which case the 

 name, I suppose, was originally ' bungbarrel,' softened down to ' bumbarrel ' for eu- 

 phony's sake ; but this is mere guess-work on my part. 



