5348 Birds. 



after the severe gales of the 26th and 27th of September they were 

 driven into the river in large flocks, and were easily approached : they 

 have singular tactics as one walks towards them : while they feed they 

 are generally scattered over the ooze in a long irregular line ; as one 

 approaches them the birds on the flank sides of the flock take wing, 

 wheel once or twice over the others, uttering all the while their peculiar 

 cry, and finally settle closer together among the rest : this manoeuvre is 

 once or twice repeated as one draws nearer to them, and each time they 

 rise and settle they form themselves into a thicker body, and, if they 

 remain on the ground until one arrives within a reasonable distance for 

 a shot, a great number can be always laid low by a single discharge. 



One stormy afternoon, on taking my usual walk along the river, 

 I observed a dark-coloured tern hovering sedulously in quest of small 

 fish over the shallows which were left by the retiring tide : it was not 

 without some wading that I succeeded at last in obtaining a shot at 

 and killing the bird, when I found it to be the lesser tern (Sterna 

 minuta), a species which, although I believe far from uncommon 

 along our eastern coast, is but rarely seen so far west as Devonshire. 



On the 23rd of September, when walking near the water's edge, I 

 remarked a light-coloured bird, which suddenly flew swiftly past me, 

 and, alighting on the water a little further on, commenced swimming on 

 the crests of the waves, appearing as it rose and fell again very much 

 like a miniature duck : I at once saw that the bird before me could be 

 no other than the gray phalarope (Phaloropus lobatus), which the 

 northern gales had driven southwards from his home along the Nor- 

 wegian coasts. I enjoyed the sight for some little time, and then, 

 having advanced and shot the bird, found it, just as I had imagined, a 

 very fine specimen in a beautiful state of intermediate plumage. A few 

 days afterwards, when sailing on the river, I observed another, but the 

 wind blowing fresh at the time, I was unable to tack about so as to get 

 anywhere near it. 



Murray A. Matthews. 



Mevton College, Oxford. 



Birds of the Crimea. By Thomas Blakiston> Esq., 

 Lieut. Royal Artillery. 



The following notes are made up from my journal kept while 

 serving with the Army of the East during twelve months in 1855 and 

 1856; but, before commencing, it will be as well to say that the ob- 

 servations refer mostly to the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, and there- 



