356 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Rooks could in this way exterminate all the Voles in a field, and this is 

 probably what happened in this case. At intervals of three or four yards 

 along the runs, the holes were found through which the Voles had been 

 pulled out of the ground. If two Rooks met along a run, there would 

 generally be two holes, about four inches apart, sloping inwards towards one 

 another ; and not infrequently there were signs of a great struggle close to 

 the hole, which I took to mean that only one Vole had been pulled up, 

 and that the Rook which unearthed him had to fight for the booty. 

 Sometimes, where three runs crossed, there would be three holes forming 

 a small triangle ; round some of these groups of holes the signs of battle 

 were terrific. In some cases the earth between the three holes had been 

 torn up so that there was only one large triangular hole. The three Rooks 

 had probably simultaneously seized a single unfortunate Vole, and the 

 struggle to pull him into three parts resulted in tearing up the soil. So 

 numerous were these holes, each one meaning the death of one, two, or three 

 Voles, that I have no doubt the Rooks did their work thoroughly. I saw no 

 more of them in the field the whole winter. — Henry M. Bernard. 



Barbastelle in Gloucestershire. — Referring to the note under this 

 heading in your last number, I cannot plead guilty to overlooking the 

 occurrence of this Bat in my own town. The specimen in question was 

 caught in a remote house close to a great wood, nearly three miles from 

 Stroud, — C. A. Witchell (The Acre, Stroud). 



BIRDS. 



The Siberian Pectoral Sandpiper in Norfolk. — Through the vigilance 

 of Mr. Lowne, of Yarmouth, I am enabled to record the addition of yet 

 another rare straggler to the already long list of Breydon rarities. On the 

 morning of the 80th August, Mr. Lowne called upon me with a small 

 wader, in the flesh, which he said puzzled him, asking me if I could name 

 it for him. Not having any special general work on this class of birds at 

 hand, I was equally as puzzled as Mr. Lowne. I therefore sent the bird on 

 to Mr. Gurney, who in returning it stated his belief that it was an example 

 of Horsfield's Tringa acuminata (T. australis of Gould), the Sharp-tailed 

 Sandpiper of American authors, with which opinion, aided by the description 

 in Mr. Seebohm's ' Geographical Distribution of the Charadriidse,' the 

 figures in Gould's ' Birds of Australia' (vol. vi. pi. 30), and after examining 

 two specimens in the Norwich Museum, marked "Australia" and "New 

 South Wales" respectively, I fully concurred, and this determination of the 

 species was subsequently confirmed by Prof. Newton. This species, which 

 closely resembles T. maculata, from which it chiefly differs in having all 

 the under parts spotted, and which was originally described by Horsfield 

 from a specimen procured in Java, is known to be a regular winter bird in 

 Australia, breeding in Eastern Siberia, where it occurs plentifully; in 



