NOTES AND QVEBIES. 4G9 



times, and seemed to endeavour to settle on the same twig, but it did not 

 do so, and had disappeared when T left. The incident was a great surprise 

 to me, as I had never heard that the Swift was in the habit of perching, 

 even occasionally, much less settling down for the night in such a place 

 and position — not really perched, but vertically suspended like a great 

 hawk-moth. The Swifts have not all left here. I saw about a dozen 

 flying over the main street this morning. — W. Gyngell (Scarborough). 



Common Roller in Sussex.— -I have received in the flesh, obtained 

 on Sept. 24th at Catslield, near Battle, Sussex, an adult female Roller, 

 Coracias garrulus ; weight, 5 oz. ; contents of gizzard, fragments of Geo- 

 trupes. It had been seen for several days by the keeper who shot it, and 

 who considered it a kind of " Galley-bird," which is the local name for the 

 Green Woodpecker. Markwich, who lived at Catsfield, recorded, in the 

 ' Transactions ' of the Linnean Society, one shot near Crowhurst Church 

 on Sept. 22nd, 1790, almost the same date. Borrer, in his *■ Birds of 

 Sussex,' records it last in 1870. — G. W. Bradshaw (Hastings). 



Survival of the Kingfisher. — I was interested in reading Mr. Farman s 

 account of the rarity of the Kingfisher in the Norfolk Fens (' Zoologist * 

 for August, p. 354). Few matters ornithological have pleased me more 

 in recent years than the abundance of the species, according to my expe- 

 rience. In this neighbourhood, within seventeen miles of London, the 

 bird is common. Wherever I fish my experience is the same. Near Dul- 

 verton, where one constantly sees them on the Exe and Barle, there is a 

 fish-hatching establishment, and, commenting one day on the traps set for 

 the unfortunate birds, the keeper told me he had caught as many as thirty 

 in a season. Near Malvern there is another similar establishment, and 

 there I was told as many as sixty had been killed in a year. As the locality 

 is far from suited to the habits of the species, I asked the keeper whether 

 he supposed they had been attracted from a distance. His reply was that 

 in his opinion they all came from the immediate neighbourhood — that the 

 bird was really very common, but seldom seen on account of its retiring 

 habits. In different parts of Herefordshire I generally see one or two when 

 out fishing. My experience has been the same in other localities. There 

 have been recent references also in the newspapers to the supposed scarcity of 

 the Kingfisher. My own hope and belief is that, although such scarcity may 

 exist here and there, the species as a species is widespread and abundant. 



I do not know whether Canon Ingram would consider that what hap- 

 pened in the " fifties " came under the description of " modern history," 

 as used by him in his note about the Wood Pigeons ;* but numbers must 

 remember, as I do, the Rooks that in 1854 and 1855 — how much later I 



* Ante, p. 383. 

 Zool, 4th ser. vol. L, October, 1897, 2 % 



