134 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



plentiful numbers. The sun was so genially warm that lolling on the 

 grassy banks was a pleasure. Add to this the fact of Stonechats hurrying 

 across to their breeding haunts, and the Chiffchaff with us, and we get a 

 picture for the middle of February, 1899, to which I can find no parallel. 

 It reads more like the middle of April. I do not think that the few frosty 

 nights we have lately had will cause much inconvenience to other Chiff- 

 chaffs which may have arrived, as I have seen these birds singing 

 vigorously in backward spring seasons ; also in late autumn, when every 

 twig has been thickly covered with hoar frost. — F. Coburn (7, Holloway 

 Head, Birmingham). 



I have recently examined the Chiffchaff [supra) which was killed at 

 Castle Bromwich by a friend of mine on Feb. 16th last. It was singing, 

 but in very subdued notes. Possibly, owing to mildness of the present 

 winter, it may have wintered with us, or at least in this country ; if not, 

 then it is a remarkably early occurrence, seldom being heard in Warwick- 

 shire before the third week in March. — J. Steele-Elliott (Clent, 

 Worcestershire). 



Pied Flycatcher in North Wales.— In Capt. Swainson's sketch of the 

 distribution of this species (Muscicapa atricapilla) in Wales (Zool. 1893, 

 pp. 420-424) no mention is made of Carnarvonshire, and only two instances 

 of the bird nesting in Denbighshire are cited. To the woods — chiefly 

 composed of oak, ash, and fir — in the Conway and Llugwy valleys, on the 

 border of the two counties, at Bettws-y-Coed, the Pied Flycatcher is an 

 abundant summer visitor. During a short stay in that neighbourhood in 

 the middle of May, 1898, 1 used to see the birds daily, and so plentiful were 

 they that on more than one occasion I encountered half a dozen pairs in 

 the course of a morning ramble. On the 11th of the month I watched 

 two birds carrying nesting material to a hole about eighteen feet from the 

 ground in the bole of a tall oak in a small wood within a stone's throw of 

 the village street, and saw two more pairs in the same wood. The 

 deliberate but pleasing song of the male, reminding one of a Redstart's, is 

 generally uttered when the bird is stationary, but sometimes during flight 

 from tree to tree. When at rest both sexes constantly move their tails 

 vertically, a habit common to the Whinchat and other birds. In its mode 

 of feeding this species differs in several respects from the Spotted Fly- 

 catcher. Although I watched them for hours at a time, I never saw a Pied 

 Flycatcher return to the same twig after darting out to catch an insect on 

 the wing. The bird usually alights on a different branch, and often in 

 another tree. Sometimes it clings Tit-like to a tree-trunk for an instant, 

 and often feeds upon the ground. The chaste and beautiful colours of the 

 plumage are never seen to greater advantage than when the bird hovers, 



