NOTES AND QUERIES. 433 



Roller in Northumberland.— On the morning of 24th Sept. last a 

 good specimen of the Roller, Coracias garrula, was shot in the grounds of 

 Callaly Castle, the ancient seat of the Claverings, about three miles S.W. of 

 Whittingham station on the Alnwick and Cornhill line. I happened to be 

 in the house at the time, and so was able to examine the bird while still 

 quite fresh. It was apparently a bird of the year, but a very good specimen. 

 I believe about a dozen specimens of the Roller are recorded to have been 

 met with in Northumberland during the present century. — H. B. Teistram 

 (Durham). 



American Yellow-billed Cuckoo in Dorsetshire.— Noticing the com- 

 munication under this heading (p. 376), it has struck me that the bird here 

 mentioned is very probably identical with some which travelled for a week 

 with me early in October. I left Boston, Mass., on the steamship « Otto- 

 man ' on Oct. 1st, and when off Cape Race ten or fifteen birds came on 

 board. There was plenty of hay on the deck, which afforded them shelter 

 and perhaps food. Six or more of them were caught by the engineers, while 

 three others were about the decks up to twenty hours of our making the 

 Irish coast, at 8 a.m. on Oct. 10th. I should think the specimen alluded 

 to might have been blown off a cattle steamer, such as ours was, bound for 

 London. All depends on the identification of the species, and I will try 

 and send you one of our captives to clear up the matter and settle its 

 identity. — Ralph L. Netlson (Fulwood Park, Liverpool). 



[The specimen picked up dead in Dorsetshire, as mentioned p. 376, was 

 found there on Oct. 5th.— Ed.] 



Honey Buzzard nesting in Herefordshire. — The interest in Mr. 

 W. E. de Winton's note on this subject in the most recent issue of ' The 

 Zoologist ' will surely be grievously discounted in the estimation of ardent 

 field-naturalists by the reflection that a most untoward fate has overtaken 

 a beautiful and essentially harmless species. That both male and female 

 should have perished is simply deplorable. It was only four or five years 

 ago, when shooting at Bishopswood, that I stopped to examine a specimen 

 of the Rough-legged Buzzard, Buteo lagopus, which had been killed and 

 gibbeted iu one of the woods, and was dangling to and fro in the breeze in 

 company with other less distinguished tattered and decaying frames. As 

 in the instance recorded by Mr. de Winton, the murder had been com- 

 mitted in ignorance of the species, which, so far as I recollect aright, was 

 designated a Goshawk, Astur palumbarius. One had only to take a bird's- 

 eye view of Bishopswood and its surroundings to realise that the district 

 was naturally adapted for periodical visits on the part of the rarer Raptores, 

 and I am quite sure that Mr. H. McCalmont, who is a personal friend of 

 mine, and to whom I am writing on the subject, will issue stringent orders 

 that Buzzards and Kites henceforward are not to be molested. The 

 explanation that an undiscerning keeper had shot the Honey Buzzards at 

 ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XIX. — NOV. 1895. 2 L 



