344 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



few days previously, a nice female Pied Woodpecker, both procured 

 close to Banbury. 



17th. An adult Kittiwake was killed near Banbury to-day; 

 another was found dead in the Cherwell at Oxford on the same 

 day, by Mr. F. W. Lambert (' Oxford Times'). Severe weather 

 lately. 



28th. A Grey Wagtail in the brook at Bloxham. 



April. 



4th. A little flock of Meadow Pipits on some rough ground 

 on the banks of the Swere at Barford ; I saw two or three on an 

 old cart-road called the Ridgeways here on the 29th March. 



5th. Notwithstanding the wintry, snowy weather lasting up to 

 the 2nd of this month, I found a Peewit's nest containing four 

 eggs here, and from the action of the birds the eggs were probably 

 incubated. This nest, which was in a very rough and rather foul 

 piece of young wheat, was much more substantial than these nests 

 generally are (perhaps on account of the inclement weather) ; it 

 was a cup of squitch-grass, and roots, with walls nearly half-an- 

 inch thick, standing up well above the ground. 



?th. Saw a party of seven or eight Redpolls. 



11th. Heard a Tree Sparrow singing. I never heard one 

 before ; it was a chant rather than a song — merely a string of 

 more or less harsh notes in no particular order, and jerked out 

 in a disjointed way. The notes were " chit wit weet weet chit wit 

 chur." I heard the Tree Creeper singing on the 28th February 

 and the 12th April. 



14th. A friend living at Milcombe told me that five years ago 

 they began to kill the Magpies by shooting them in the hedges 

 at night, and since then they have killed on an average fifty 

 every winter. In 1889-90 they got sixty-five. In the past winter 

 only twenty were killed, as the snow on the ground made it 

 difficult to approach the birds. Notwithstanding this he noticed 

 four nests in sight at once a day or two ago. I recently counted 

 five nests in sight at once on the Barford side of Bloxham. 



18th. Young Rooks were calling from the nests. 



26th. Heard in the lower part of Milcombe Gorse the note of 

 a bird which I did not know — " chit-e-chee, chit-e-chee" — and 

 traced it to a slender dark-coloured bird sitting in the top of a 

 thorn rising out of thick gorse. It was a Dartford Warbler, 



