250 THE ZOOLOGIST* 



Carrion Crows at Sibford for some weeks. A very small specimen 

 (less than an ordinary Rook) was shot at Byfield — outside our 

 borders, in Northamptonshire — at the end of December, 1890. 



Rook. — Of four dozen young birds shot at Bloxham Grove, 

 May 14th, 1890, half had a portion of the lower mandible light- 

 coloured, generally a spot near the base, one or two had the whole 

 base light ; one-quarter of them with some white feathers on the 

 chin, and two or three with white chins ; one of these last had 

 also a large portion of the lower mandible pinkish white, one 

 primary and one primary-covert in the near wing pure white, 

 three claws on one foot and one on the other pure white, one toe- 

 joint and parts of others, especially the under side, dirty white. 



Swallow. — One was seen over the Isis at the Gut, Iniey, on 

 March 29th, 1890, by Mr. Joe Wilson, of Mill Hill, Iffley . He never 

 saw one before April 9th in previous years (' Oxford Times'). 



Sand Martin.— Mr. Melliar Foster Melliar, of North Aston 

 Hall, informs me that ever since he has lived there Sand Martins 

 have nested in the kitchen-garden wall; this is for a period of 

 about thirty years. A few years ago they used to breed in an old 

 stone wall in the village of Adderbury ; and Mr. J. R. Earle found 

 a nest in a hole between the bricks underneath a bridge of the 

 London and North- Western Railway at Oxford (Zool. 1884, p. 71). 

 There is, or was, a large colony in a cutting of the railway near 

 Littlemore. I saw the birds swarming there in May, 1880. 



Swift. — On Aug. 22nd, 1890, I counted eleven Swifts in the 

 air over the buildings of All Saints School, Bloxham, where they 

 have a breeding colony ; others were screaming round the church 

 at the other end of the village. They have often entirely left us 

 a week earlier. 



Nightjar. — The Rev. Murray A. Mathew writes me word that 

 when he was at Oxford the Nightjar was common in Stow Wood, 

 where he saw it every evening when he visited the wood to collect 

 moths. I purchased from Mr. Wyatt the fresh skin of a bird in 

 first dress — hardly full-feathered indeed — which was shot while 

 flying round an oak tree at Epwell on Sept. 8th, 1889. 



Cuckoo. — A good example of the red phase, a young bird, 

 was killed near Banbury in the second week in August, 1889. 

 Upper parts warm rufous, rather light, narrowly barred with 

 brown, and some feathers tipped with dirty white. Under parts 

 tinged with bull', and under tail-coverts warm buff. No part of 



