NOTES AND QUEKIES. 315 



an intermediate plumage, or resemble one or other parent ? Both cases 

 occur wheu the Black and Grey Crows interbreed. Pied Wagtails nest in 

 our ivy wall every year, and the hen birds are always tame, so I have a 

 pretty good acquaintance with their plumage, but the hen bird of the nest 

 above mentioned is quite unlike any Wagtail I have ever seen here.— 

 Julian G. Tuck (Tostock Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds). 



Scops Owl in Norfolk.— A male of this species, in good plumage and 

 condition, was shot at Walsingham Abbey, by a keeper of Mr. Henry Lee 

 Warner, on May 21st, 1891. The keeper mistook it for a " Blue Hawk " 

 (i. e. male Sparrowhawk), as it flew down a glade, the afternoon being cold, 

 dull, and rainy, otherwise it would not have been interfered with ; for Owls 

 receive careful protection from the proprietor of Walsingham Abbey. The 

 keeper at once took the bird to Mr. Lee Warner, who has preserved it. 

 Messrs. Gurney and Southwell, writing of this species (' List of Norfolk 

 Birds,' 1886), remark that " The only example obtained in the last fifty- 

 eight years, and indeed the only one which can be implicitly relied on, was 

 one picked up by a boy, in November, 1861, on the road which runs 

 beneath the lighthouse at Cromer." Prof. Newton (4th ed. Yarrell's 

 'British Birds') writes that this " species, which is known as a regular 

 summer migrant in most parts of Southern Europe, arriving and departing 

 with the Swallow, is in this country but a casual visitor ; and that we have 

 it at all is probably due to the fact that the examples observed have been 

 stragglers which have lost their way." The capture of this species in 

 Norfolk, at such opposite seasons as May and November, coincides with 

 the migratory habits of this pretty little Owl, for these months are likely 

 periods for a straggler to arrive on our shores. The stomach of this speci- 

 men was entirely filled with the remains of beetles.— H. W. Feilden 

 (Wells, Norfolk). 



Short-eared Owls in Essex in May.— Whilst looking for the nests of 

 some Gulls, Larus ridibundus, on the bentlings near Walton-on-the-Naze, 

 on Whit-Monday last, I flushed a Short-eared Owl. It had just killed a 

 Black-headed Gull, and had commenced to pluck and eat it ; the blood was 

 flowing from the dead bird. Being very fearless, it did not fly more than 

 ten yards at a time; most probably it was breeding somewhere near. It 

 faas about one mile distant from the spot where I saw Short-eared Owls 

 in August, 1884, and two miles from where they bred in 1889 (see Zool. 

 1889, p. 453).— F. Kerey (Harwich). 



Tufted Ducks nesting in Nottinghamshire.— We have had three 

 pairs of Tufted Ducks nesting this summer on the islands in the lake here 

 :lose to the house. One of these nests is on the top of a Wild Ducks' 

 pest, the Wild Ducks having left about a month before the Tufted Ducks 

 began to lay.— J. Whitaker (Rainwortli, Notts). 



