NOTES AND QUERIES. 231 



The other pair, which I had turned out into a cold aviary, developed 

 perfectly ; and in May the male began to make advances to the hen, which 

 she at first resented j eventually she permitted him to feed her, and he 

 finally succeeded in enticing her into a log-nest suspended in one corner of 

 the aviary. From this time the female bird seldom left the log-nest ; the 

 male bird entered from time to time to feed her, and I hoped she had laid 

 eggs and was sitting; but in this I was mistaken, for it was late in June 

 when, weary of waiting for results, I looked into the nest, and discovered 

 two freshly-laid eggs. Early in July, watching my opportunity when the 

 hen was taking a constitutional, I again looked into the nest and discovered 

 a plump naked youngster, which uttered harsh hissing sounds until I covered 

 it up. It left the nest, fully feathered, but with a short tail, on June 26th, 

 able to fly short distances, but extremely nervous about trusting to its 

 wings ; the efforts of the parents to induce it to fly were very interesting. 

 By September this young bird was larger than either parent, and called 

 as loudly (the note is not unlike that sometimes produced by a heavy 

 iron gate when very rusty and slowly opened widely) ; I therefore concluded 

 that I had reared a male; but, as it still retains the greenish grey head of 

 its mother, it seems likely that I was mistaken in this surmise. It is much 

 wilder than its parents, which one would hardly have expected in a bird 

 bred in confinement; but I have noticed in the case of some of our British 

 birds that when reared from the nest by hand they become not only more 

 wild than those caught in traps or nets, but remain permanently so. — 

 A. G. Butler (Beckenham). 



Jack Snipe in Dorsetshire in May. — On the evening of May 25th I 

 flushed a Jack Snipe close to my feet, in a swamp on Bloxworth Heath. It 

 pitched down again about twenty yards off, but I could not get it to rise a 

 second time. This is the latest occurrence I have ever recorded. In my 

 note-book on 'Birds ' I see that on May 6th, 1851, I flushed a pair of these 

 birds in a bog about a quarter of a mile distant from the spot where the 

 one now recorded was found. I had no time on the last occasion to make 

 any effectual search for a nest ; in fact the spot where it rose was evidently 

 only one where the bird was just then feeding; but it can hardly be 

 supposed that these birds should be here in May and not breed with us. 

 Some lucky accident will, I suspect, one day prove this to be the case. — 

 0. P. Cambridge (Bloxworth Rectory). 



Song of the Cirl Bunting. — Have any of the readers of ' The 

 Zoologist ' noticed that the Cirl Bunting has, in addition to its well-known 

 ditty, which resembles that of the Yellowhammer without the long con- 

 cluding note, a short and pleasant song sounding like " say, say, see," or 

 " sayo, sayo, see"; the last note a third higher than the preceding? On 

 one occasion, some years ago, I heard a bird which I believed to be a 



