436 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



either taken out of a nest or when leaving it. — J. H. Gurney (Keswick, 

 Norwich). 



Black-throated Diver breeding in Norway.— In June last I observed, 

 on a lake in Norway, a pair of Black-throated Divers with three young 

 ones. The parents left them on seeing me, but returned in about ten 

 minutes and swam off with them. I observed them very distinctly through 

 a binocular. The nest was on an island, close to the water, but the frag- 

 ments of egg-shells were too small to show the number of eggs, though in 

 another case I found two nearly complete shells from which the young had 

 escaped. — J. P. Thomasson (Woodside, Bolton). 



Number of Eggs of the Cormorant and Shag.— Speaking from my 

 own experience in Ireland, in reply to the query of Mr. Raeburn, I have over 

 and over again taken clutches of Shag with four eggs (never more), though 

 three is the usual number. I have found eggs of this species in the first 

 stage of incubation as early as the 15th April, and from having found young 

 in several nests on the Saltees on the 14th May (not the 11th, as stated in 

 Mr. Saunders' 'Manual'), I believe that Shags frequently lay here in the 

 middle of April. The Cormorant is decidedly the commoner species on the 

 Waterford coast, though the Shag — common as it is here — is far more 

 abundant on the west coast of Ireland. I have found clutches of four 

 Cormorants' eggs, in different years, on the 15th and 16th of April, though 

 these were early instances. The usual number of eggs is four, three being 

 certainly exceptional here ; but I have taken a good many clutches of five, 

 though I have never met with six in one nest. Mr. Raeburn does not 

 state the dates when he found either species laying in Shetland, nor 

 whether the Cormorants' clutches of three eggs were fresh or incubated. 

 If I saw Cormorants' nests here with three eggs in each, I should conclude 

 that the clutches were incomplete, unless I found them incubated. — R. J. 

 Ussber (Cappagh, Co. Waterford). 



Number of Eggs laid by the Shag. — In reply to Mr. Raeburn 's 

 question (p. 388), whether any of your readers have met with more than 

 three eggs in a nest of the Shag, Phalacrocorax cristatus, I beg to inform 

 you that 1 have often found four, in nests of both the Cormorant and Shag, 

 off the west coast of Scotland. The number of eggs laid by birds is 

 probably affected by the food supply. I know a district in Wales where 

 the Tawny Owl rarely lays more than two eggs. At the well-known Black- 

 headed Gullery at Scoulton the keeper once told me that "the take" had 

 fallen from 1000 to 300 eggs a week, in consequence of the drought which 

 prevailed at the time. — J. Young (64, Hereford Road, W.). 



Sooty Shearwater at Hastings.— Through the kindness of Mr. Thos. 

 Parkin, of Halton, near Hastings, I am able to record the capture in that 

 neighbourhood, on the 3rd of September last, of an adult mule Sooty 



