NOTES FROM OXFORDSHIRE. 345 



a bird I have looked for for years in this district, and always 

 expected to find on Todmarton Heath, which almost joins this 

 gorse ; but the latter is much warmer and more sheltered. 

 I watched it for a few minutes, when it became alarmed and 

 dropped like a stone into the gorse. The note I heard was 

 no doubt that which is syllabled by Mr. Howard Saunders 

 "pit-i-chou." My lettering, of course, merely records my im- 

 pression of the note, and was pencilled down after hearing it 

 repeated only some half-a-dozen times or so. The Grasshopper 

 Warbler was singing in the gorse on my return at 7.30 p.m. 

 I saw a male White Wagtail in the village brook. 



27th. On the east of Bloxham village are rather high-lying 

 arable fields, very open and divided by low hedges, with hardly 

 any trees. This afternoon I was crossing a part of the largest of 

 these which had been planted with barley. The barley had 

 sprouted about an inch high ; here I caught sight of a small flock 

 of birds wheeling round low over the ground. They alighted 

 again almost directly, and by walking round and round in an 

 unconcerned manner I got within fifteen or twenty yards of 

 them before they rose again. They were Dotterel, a bird I had 

 never seen alive before. The "trip" comprised eighteen birds. 

 Of these two were plain and very light-coloured ; six were darker, 

 but still quite dull, with no bright colours ; the other ten were 

 in full plumage, five or six of them being most brilliant birds. 

 (See ' The Field,' 7th May, 1892.) 



28th. The Tree Creeper is very common this spring. I have 

 seen more individuals than in the last year or two altogether. 

 Mr. F. C. Aplin saw one a few days ago busily searching the walls 

 of an old brown stone house in Eodway, Warwickshire. I never 

 happen to have heard of a Tree Creeper on a house-wall before, 

 and it seems the more curious because there is an abundance of 

 old timber about Rodway. 



May. 

 3rd. News from Mr. Fowler at Oxford that he saw on April 

 29th, in Port Meadow, among a company of Motacilla rail, one 

 which he " had little doubt was M. flava : dark head, and back 

 darker than M. rail, and altogether different from the rest, in- 

 cluding females." He could not get a long-enough or near-enough 

 look to discover the white eye-stripe, as the river was crowded 



