434 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Solitary Snipe in Co. Mayo.— A specimen of this rare visitor to 

 Ireland was shot on October 13th by Mr. T. L. Mason, at Ballycroy, 

 Co. Mayo. On dissection, the bird proved to be a female in good condition, 

 weighing seven ounces. This is only the fifth occurrence, so far as 

 ascertained, of this species on the west coast within the last few years. — 

 E. Williams (2, Dame Street, Dublin). 



The Cormorants in St. James's Park.— Though late in the day to 

 make the request, I venture to ask you, if you can, to spare a corner in your 

 columns to place on record the fact — unnoticed hitherto, so far as I am 

 aware, in any public print — that the captive Cormorants bred this year for 

 the first time in St. James's Park. The birds were brought from the 

 Megstone Rock, the most northerly of the group of the outer Fame 

 Islands, in 1888, a few weeks after the visit of a fine, apparently wild, 

 Cormorant, in full adult plumage, to London waters had been noted in 

 ' The Times.' Neither their appetites nor their digestions suffered by the 

 change from the bracing air of Northumberland, and a day or two after 

 their arrival one of the party, at the time barely two-thirds grown, after 

 swallowing a couple of haddocks, bolted a full-sized rat, just killed and 

 dropped accidentally near it, and at once opened its beak to ask for more. 

 They showed no signs of breeding until 1892, when a pair, then in their 

 fifth year, took possession of a nest which had been prepared for them, and 

 one egg was laid. Under natural conditions a Comorant's egg is strong- 

 shelled, and so thickly coated with lime as to look often less like a real egg 

 than a carelessly-cut model in chalk. The last year's egg was thin-shelled, 

 and so brittle that it broke under the weight of the bird. The keeper, 

 gathering from this that more tonic food was needed, has this year, when 

 feeding the birds, powdered the fish with pounded shells. The experiment 

 has proved successful, and late in the season two satisfactory eggs were 

 laid, one of which was hatched about the end of the first week of Sep- 

 tember, some two or three months behind the usual hatching time of the 

 species. The nestling has been devotedly tended by both parents, who 

 have until very lately fed it regularly from their own crops with half- 

 digested fish, and so closely brooded it that it has seldom been possible to 

 see it without disturbing them. To the usual perils of infancy has been 

 added in this case an invasion of the corner of the lake railed off for 

 the use of the Cormorants by a couple of White Swans, who, " like eagles 

 in a dove-cote," fluttered the old birds and drove their charge from the nest. 

 But all have been safely passed ; and, in spite of its unseasonable arrival, 

 the young bird, as I saw it yesterday, is well grown and healthy, and 

 promises, before winter sets in in earnest, to be strong enough to struggle 

 effectively for existence on its own account. — T. Digby Pigott (5, Ovington 

 Gardens, S.W.).— ' The Times; Oct. 25th. 



[Some years ago a pair of trained Cormorants which had been tern* 



