NOTES AND QUERIES. 309 



While standing on the beach at Bordighera on Easter Monday last, 

 watching the arrival of migrants, I saw a little bird descend, as it were, 

 from the skies, and alight on the pebbles a short distance from me. 

 I approached it, and found it so much exhausted as to allow me to take it 

 in my hand. I had just identified it as a female White-spotted Bluethroat, 

 when it slipped out of my hand and flew out to sea again. It very soon 

 alighted on the water, where it looked to me just like a Storm Petrel, and 

 after a short while rose again without difficulty. Again, however, it sank 

 on the waves, to rise in flight once more, after which I lost sight of it. 

 I may add two other facts which will possibly be of interest. During the 

 ten days I was at Bordighera, from April 13th to April 23rd, I only once 

 saw the birds arriving in any numbers on the coast, and that was in wet 

 and cold weather, with a wind from N.E. Yet all the time there were signs 

 enough that they were crowding in — the olive groves being full of them, 

 and the species changing almost from day to day. The bad weather 

 apparently kept them low, and brought them to my notice. Secondly, 

 I observed a remarkable migration of Swifts, Swallows, and House Martins, 

 with a few Alpine Swifts, along the coast eastwards, on April 19th. 

 Thousands passed over me, going at a speed which I tried to measure by 

 noting their progress from point to point, and roughly calculated at two 

 miles and a half per minute. This eastward migration, after the birds 

 arrive on the south coast of France, I cannot find alluded to in books; 

 though Herr Gatke has suggested it in his chapter on the " Direction of 

 Migration Flight." — W. Warde Fowler. 



Redshank breeding in Sussex. — The Redshank, says Mr. Borrer in 

 his excellent county avifauna (p. 244), still breeds (1891) in a few places 

 in Sussex, such as Pevensey Level, whence he has received its eggs within 

 the last few years. During the present summer, when revisiting Pagham 

 Harbour, or rather the site of what was once Pagham Harbour, now alas ! 

 completely destroyed by drainage and partial reclamation, I came upon two 

 pairs of Redshanks, which were nesting in high grass in one of the least 

 accessible spots still partially surrounded with water in the bed of the old 

 harbour. They were very noisy, and comparatively tame, as such birds 

 usually are in the breeding season, flying overhead in circles, often within 

 gun-shot, had I been disposed to secure one. My only weapon, however, 

 was a field-glass, and I was much entertained in watching their beautiful 

 evolutions on the wing, as they circled round their nests, piping at intervals 

 their wild melodious notes, so much in keeping with the dreary waste over 

 which they hovered. — J. E. Harttng. 



Little Crake in Sussex. — A Little Crake, Porzana parva (Scopoli), 

 was caught near Battle by a dog on the 30th of June last. The bird was 

 brought to Messrs. Bristow, taxidermists of St. Leonards, for preservation, 



