THE ZOOLOGIST 



FOE 1857. 



Stray Notes from an Ornithologist' *s Diary during the past Summer. 

 By Murray A. Matthews, Esq. 



In the neighbourhood of Barnstaple, North Devon, during the last 

 eighteen months, specimens of the rarer British birds have occurred 

 more frequently than, perhaps, in any other part of England for the 

 same period. It is my opinion that were an active and enthusiastic 

 ornithologist to establish himself in this quarter, and work it diligently, 

 many new and important facts would be collected relative to the 

 habits and economy of some of our scarcer birds with which the bird- 

 studying world is as yet but imperfectly acquainted. The situation of 

 Barnstaple and the country round it is one peculiarly fitted to attract 

 any birds which may be straggling westwards. We have a most 

 diversified country : hills, fallow-lands, dry heath, elevated moors, 

 extensive rushy marshes, and where the Taw below Barnstaple flows 

 broad and tidal, previous to its uniting with the Torridge at Appledore 

 and joining the Bristol channel, we have broad sandy flats, which are 

 left dry as the tide retreats, and here and there soft beds of ooze, 

 formed from that alluvial deposit which the Taw has rolled down 

 through many a fertile meadow on its way from the wilds of Dartmoor. 

 And where the two rivers meet there is a large tract of dry and barren 

 sandhills, known favourably some years ago to entomologists as a sure 

 haunt of Deilephila Euphorbiae, bordered landwards by an extensive 

 fenny flat called the Braunton Marshes. Above Barnstaple, again, there 

 are the Tawton Marshes, in which, in October, 1855, a fine specimen of 

 the great gray shrike (Lanius excubitor) was killed by a farmer: 

 this bird is now in my collection. In these marshes also, during the 

 severe weather last January, several fine specimens of the bittern were 

 shot. A little way to the south of Barnstaple, near a village of the 

 XV. B 



