Birds. 1639 



November last, I observed a number of Himndines, as many as fifteen or twenty, 

 sporting at some beight in the air over the Ponds at Springfield, near Temple Balsall in 

 this county. From their distance, I was not able satisfactorily to ascertain which spe- 

 cies of our three common swallows these birds belonged to, but my impression is that 

 they were chiefly house martins ( Hirundo urbica) ; one however, out of the number, 

 I feel no hesitation in saying, was a common swallow (H. rustica). I have fre- 

 quently seen single individuals of our Himndines much later in the year than the 18th 

 of November, but never before recollect to have seen so great a number together at 

 that late period. I may add that several specimens of the hawfinch ( Coccothraustes 

 vulgaris) have been shot here this winter, and many more seen. — William Bree, B.A.; 

 Allesley, January 2nd, 1847. 



Swallows in January. — I myself saw in the afternoon of January 18th, 1837, on 

 New Miller Dam, near Wakefield, three swallows sporting and dipping and hawking 

 as in the midst of summer : the day was very mild and still. — J. Johnson, Jun., Col- 

 legiate School, Huddersfield, November 24th, 1846. 



Note on the rearing of Kingfishers* — When a boy, being esteemed a great con- 

 noisseur in birds, two men brought to me a nest of young kingfishers, consisting of 

 five or six, I forget which ; I well remember they had no feathers, and you could 

 scarcely perceive the stubbs in the wing, where the feathers first make their appear- 

 ance. They were what the boys at school used to call single-stubbed. I should con- 

 ceive they could not be more than a week or a few days old. I gave them nothing but 

 minnows to eat, and with that food alone, they were reared till they got their wings, 

 and flew away. I shall forbear to mention the quantity of minnows the birds ate in 

 the twenty-four hours, as it would appear to exceed all credibility. The men who 

 brought them to me were digging chalk, and observed the kingfishers going in and 

 out of a hole in the chalk-pit, and as they told me, the nest was found nearly a yard 

 in from the outer opening. — Philip Henry Poole ; Littleton Farm, 20th June, 1828. 



Habits of the Kingfisher. — In an interesting notice of the habits of the kingfisher, 

 in the December number of the Zoologist, p. 1551, Dr. Morris mentions the propen- 

 sity of the bird, in certain situations, to suspend itself in the air, and hover like a kes- 

 trel over the water, before it seizes its prey ; and this he considers a deviation from the 

 bird's usual habits. I beg to state, that this hovering in the air in search of food, is 

 by no means an unusual thing with the kingfisher. Even in this midland county the 

 bird may occasionally be seen playing the kestrel over our rivers and smaller brooks, 

 where there is no no lack of twigs, bushes, &c, on which to sit in ambush for its prey, 

 if it preferred doing so. I once saw a kingfisher poise itself in the air, and hover for 

 some seconds over the river Blvth, five or six feet above the surface, when on a sud- 

 den it dropped like a stone into the water, and brought up a moderate sized bleak, with 

 which it flew a short distance to the root of a neighbouring tree, and there giving the 

 bleak one turn in its bill, swallowed it whole with the greatest apparent ease. I should 

 not have supposed it possible, had I not been an eye-witness of the fact, that so small 

 a bird would have swallowed a fish of the size, or stowed it away wholesale in its sto- 

 mach. The kingfisher, it is well known, is a shy bird ; but the quiet patient angler 

 has sometimes an opportunity of making a very near inspection of its ways and doings. 

 Once when I was angling, and standing quite still among the bushes by the side of a 



* Communicated by the Rev. G. T. Rudd, M.A. 



