Birds. 3911 



them. All this, then, seems to me amply to account for the few known instances of 

 their breeding, at least about us. Though I have long thought that woodcocks should 

 not be shot after the 1st of March, I have hitherto, for want of a conclusive reason to 

 the contrary, continued the usual practice of killing them whenever to be found, in 

 some years even up to the 1st of April ; however, for the future, they will be intact, 

 by me, after the 14th of February : and I now firmly believe that most of those which 

 I killed on the 10th of last March, would have bred there had they been spared, for 

 the ground is in every way what one would suppose well suited for the breeding and 

 rearing of this bird. I trust therefore that all who may read this will, in time to come, 

 give them a chance of breeding in this country, by allowing them to go free after the 

 14th or so of February; and I doubt not, if this plan were pretty generally adopted, 

 that it would materially increase the number of birds in the ensuing season, and make 

 their nesting in England a comparatively common occurrence. Since writing the 

 above, I have learned that a pair of woodcocks were also seen by my brother on the 

 6th of April last, while hunting his beagles, in another copse at some distance from 

 that where the young ones were found. — Octavius Pickard-Cambridge ; Hatch Beau- 

 champ, Taunton, Somerset, May 12, 1853. 



Occurrence of the Great Snipe (Scolopax major) near Durham. — Two or three spe- 

 cimens of the great snipe were obtained in this neighbourhood during the winter, and 

 they are considered to be pretty regular winter visitants. The Hon. Augustus Bar- 

 rington informs me, that some thirty or forty years ago, as he and his brother, the pre- 

 sent Lord Barrington, were shooting on Fishburn Car, about halfway between Castle 

 Eden and Darlington, they killed, in the month of August, four solitary snipes, two of 

 which were young birds, scarcely fully fledged. This is the only instance I ever heard 

 of this bird breeding in Britain. So careful an observer as Mr. Barrington could 

 hardly have mistaken this snipe, and the singularity of the occurrence imprinted the 

 fact on his memory, although he was not aware at the time that the nest of the solitary 

 snipe had never been found in this country. Last summer I met with this bird in vast 

 numbers along the coast of Nordland and Finmark. In one marsh near Bosoe, we 

 obtained I think seven brace in half an hour, in the month of August, the young birds 

 being fully fledged. — H. B. Tristram ; Castle Eden, Durham, May 10, 1853. 



Occurrence of the White-winged Black Tern (Sterna leucoptera) near Yarmouth. — 

 This bird was killed on the 17th instant, by Mr. Robert Rising's keeper, at Horsey, near 

 Yarmouth. Three or four of the black tern were killed at the same time with it. — 

 George Trederick ; 11, Charles Street, Westbourne Terrace, May 21, 1853. 



[I have seen this bird in the flesh, and can state therefore that it is an example of 

 the white-winged black tern.— W. Yarrell ; May 21, 1853.] 



Occurrence of the Little Gull (Larus minutus) in Shetland. — On Thursday, the 

 7th of April, I had the pleasure of shooting a specimen of the little gull {Larus minu- 

 tus). When I first saw it, it was flying by itself at a distance, and from its small size 

 I fancied it was one of the tern tribe, but as it came nearer T readily perceived, by the 

 roundness of its wings and the shortness of its tail, that it was not a tern. As it flew, 

 it kept dipping down to the sea every here and there, as if picking something off the 

 surface of the water. It flew past us once out of shot, but did not go far before it 

 turned again, we crossed it with the boat, and I was fortunate enough to shoot it as it 

 flew past. It is an adult female, in fine plumage, excepting that the head was moult- 

 ing from white to black. This, and an adult specimen of the Iceland gull (Larus 

 leucopterus), which I shot on the 22nd of November, 1852, together with throe or four 



