352 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



my companions, that there were two species of this bird, one making its 

 nest in a tree, and the other in a hedge, and they were named accordingly. 

 This would show that the nest was frequently found in a hedge, and I can 

 distinctly remember the sorry plight I sometimes presented after climbing 

 to the top of a high hawthorn hedge to discover the contents of a nest. 

 The hedges are now kept much lower than they were at the time I speak of, 

 with the exception of those around the hop-plantations. I have no recol- 

 lection of finding the nest of a Crow in a hedge in my early days ; it was 

 reserved for a much later period in life to do so. Walking one day in the 

 middle of April, 18S3, in some meadows near this city, I perceived in front 

 of me a Crow perched on a tall hedge ; as I approached nearer, I then saw 

 what appeared to be a nest, little dreaming, until T closely examined it, that 

 it belonged to that species ; it contained five eggs, two of which I retained 

 for my collection. I visited the same locality in the early part of May this 

 year, and to my surprise, in the same hedge, there was a nest of this bird, 

 apparently built this year. It appears strange to select a situation about 

 nine feet high, in such a well-wooded district as this is. — J. B. Pilley 

 (Hereford). 



Strange Roosting-place for Swallows. — It is a familiar habit that 

 Swallows have of roosting amongst reeds in bogs, and by loch margins, in 

 large flocks during the autumn months. In this district there are at least 

 three such places where these birds congregate in very large flocks each 

 evening, and pass the night thickly clustered along the bending reed-stems. 

 At one of these localities, in some seasons, I have seen over a thousand 

 birds roosting each evening for weeks, this large flock not being entirely 

 composed of Swallows, but also including a large proportion of Sand 

 Martins and many House Martins. The other evening, in passing a large 

 break of young beech trees in one of our nursery fields, I startled a small 

 flock of birds that had been roosting on the plants. In a few minutes the 

 birds— about a dozen in number — returned and settled in a row on a little 

 branch that bent down with their weight, till it rested on the general mass 

 of foliage, and I saw with surprise that they were Swallows. I have seen 

 them coming to the same spot each evening since. The average height of 

 the plants is about three feet, and the closeness with which they stand 

 together, as is usual in nursery lines, makes the strange place thus chosen 

 almost inapproachable by cats or other enemies. This is surely a new 

 habit the Swallows have acquired, for, although a reed-thicket and a break 

 of young nursery trees have certain points of similarity, yet in their 

 essential characteristics one situation represents nature in primitive wild- 

 ness, while a highly cultivated nursery shows just the opposite extreme. — 

 Robert Service (Maxwelltown, Dumfries). 



The Song of the Redwing.— In * The Zoologist ' for August (p. 313), 

 Mr. J. Whitaker describes the song of the Redwing as heard in April. As 



