4996 Birds. 



the ground by it for nearly a quarter of a mile to the farm, where a farming man 

 killed it by breaking its neck, that the boy, as he said, '■ might carry it easier." The 

 boy says the bird was quite clean when he first saw it, but that he made it dirty by 

 dragging it along the field. The bird passed through the hands of two or three 

 persons, and came at length into the possession of W. H. Rowland, Esq., of Hunger- 

 ford, who sent it up to Mr. Leadbeater, of Brewer Street, to be preserved. Mr. Row- 

 land did me the favour to call upon me on Saturday, the 12th inst., and went with me 

 to Brewer Street, that I might see the specimen. Mr. Leadbeater had examined the 

 inside of the bird, and had saved the sexual part in spirit, which showed that it was a 

 young male. The bird appeared to be about eighteen or twenty months old, and was, 

 as I believe, a bird of the season of 1854. The fracture of the bone of the leg, with, 

 the skin torn through, about half way between the true heel and the knee, did not ap- 

 pear as if produced by gun shot, nor was there a single perforation in any other part of 

 the skin of the bird. The wound was too high up to have been caused by a trap, and 

 perhaps the accident had occurred by the bustard getting his leg entangled among the 

 bars of sheep-hurdles, and making efforts to get loose. The wound was apparently of 

 some days standing, and had bled considerably. That the bird was weak and ex- 

 hausted may be safely inferred from its allowing a boy to drag it along the ground by 

 the wing, so courageous and fightable as this species is known to be when in health ; 

 there was, moreover, very little blood within the skin where the neck was broken. 

 The soft parts had been irrecoverably made away with, or I should have examined 

 the neck with great interest. — W. Yarrell ; Ryder Street, St. James 7 . 



Occurrence of the Bittern at Lewes. — Two bitterns were brought me last Saturday, 

 both killed in this parish during the week. — G. Grantham ; Barcombe, Lewes, 

 December 22, 1855. 



Savage Conduct of a Tame Drake. — Having taken considerable trouble, for several 

 years past, in breeding and domesticating wild ducks at this place, I have now often 

 to boast of eighty or one hundred couple of wild ducks to be seen on the pools during 

 the hard weather and when the smaller and less sheltered waters are frozen up : at 

 this time of year I desire the keeper to supply the ducks with barley in the straw and 

 grains after brewing, for them to feed upon, and this induces many of the wild ducks 

 to remain all the year through, and to breed here in the summer months, an account 

 of which, and of the difficulty often met with in rearing the young ones, in conse- 

 quence of the large pike, crows and other vermin attacking the old birds on the nests 

 and the young ducks when first hatched, appeared some time ago in another periodical 

 publication ; but this year I had to encounter another kind of enemy I little antici- 

 pated. In the secluded parts of the range of pools here the wild ducks are accustomed 

 often to make their nests close to the edge of the water and underneath the ledges of 

 projecting rocks which overhang the pools : there being, however, a well-preserved fox- 

 covert along one side of one of the larger pools, the poor ducks, while sitting, often are 

 taken off their nests by the foxes, and the eggs left for the rats to feed upon, which 

 they will do most voraciously, and sometimes in the scuffle with the foxes the eggs 

 may be seen all rolled into the water, and are then totally destroyed. Last breeding 

 season, a farmer, whose farm-yard is but a short distance from one of the pools, from 

 which there is a kind of horse-road down to a driuking-place for his cattle, had 

 a couple of white Aylesbury ducks and a mallard made him a present of; these three 

 confined themselves for several months to the farm-yard and about the ricks, and were 

 generally put up at night time, but in an evil hour they determined to follow the path 



