NOTES AND QUERIES. 278 



others — have recorded that small birds will mob a Cuckoo from its similarity 

 in appearance to a hawk. — Ed.] 



Peculiar Nesting Habit of the House Sparrow.— We have a colony of 

 Sparrows which build nests in a creeper on the front of our house. This 

 year the creeper was very slow in coming out, and the nests were therefore 

 very visible to the naked eye ; so the Sparrows took a great number of 

 leaves from a tree in front of the house and stuck them about the creeper, 

 with the view apparently of covering up its deficiencies. Of course they 

 dropped four for every one they fixed in the creeper, and those they did 

 get there were soon blown down ; but they nearly stripped the side of the 

 tree next the house. — A. L. Lewis (54, Highbury Hill, N.). 



Change of Plumage in the Nonpareil Finch. — Last summer I pur- 

 chased a Nonpareil Finch, Cyanospiza ciris, from a local dealer. When I 

 first had the bird its breast-feathers were scarlet, but since its last moult 

 they have become orange. I should be glad if any readers of ' The Zoolo- 

 gist ' could inform me if there is any method of restoring the scarlet colour 

 of the feathers at the next moult. The bird itself is in the best of health, 

 and sings well, and I may say the blue of the head and the green feathers 

 on the back leave nothing to be desired. It is kept in a roomy cage, has 

 plenty of exercise, and in addition to ordinary seed diet has abundance of 

 insect food. I am aware that Nonpareils in captivity are very liable to lose 

 colour, and should be glad of any suggestion as to feeding, &c , which might 

 enable me to remedy this. — Graham Renshaw (Sale Bridge House, Sale, 

 Cheshire). 



Occurrence of the Black-headed Bunting in Sussex. — Early in 

 January of the present year, while looking over some birds in the possession 

 of Mr. Daniel Francis, I recognized an example, in adult female plumage, 

 of the Black-headed Bunting, Euspiza, or, as it is more generally called, 

 Emberiza melanocephala. It was given to Mr. Francis on the morning of 

 Nov. 3rd, 1894 — the day on which, as Gould supposed, the first British 

 example was killed twenty-six years before— by one of the men of the 

 coastguard service, who had just picked it up in an exhausted condition 

 close to the metals on the South Coast line of railway near Bexhill. The 

 bird had a shattered wing, and had probably been shot at while perched on 

 the telegraph-wires. Through my friend's kindness the specimen is now in 

 my possession. The original British specimen was shot in this county in 

 November, 1868, and is in the choice collection of Sussex birds formed by 

 Mr. Monk, of Lewes. Since that year it has occurred twice in other parts 

 of Britain, so that the present makes the fourth record. During the 

 breeding season the species is "abundant in Asia Minor, all through the 

 Caucasus " mountains, but it rarely extends westward or northward of the 



