78 Birds. 



of young swallows and martins. I observed no old birds of either 

 of the last species, as my attention was mostly directed to the swifts. 

 It was a bright sunny day and very warm ; I could not have been 

 mistaken in the birds, as they played round our heads whilst we stood 

 looking at them for a considerable time after I had pointed them out 

 to my companion, Mr. C. Rippingall. — E. W. Dowell ; Jesus College, 

 Cambridge, February 3, 1843. 



Note on the occurrence of the Orange-legged Hobby. As I perceive 

 that your pages are open to notices of rare British species, you will 

 perhaps give insertion to the two following instances of the occurrence 

 of the orange-legged hobby {Falco rujipes),* earlier than any men- 

 tioned by Mr. Yarrell, to whom T neglected to communicate them in 

 time for their appearance in his work. 



When I was at school in Wiltshire in 1825, I bought a small hawk 

 from a countryman, who said he had seen it pursued and struck down 

 by a raven in Littlecote Park near Hungerford. He caught it on the 

 ground before it recovered, and according to his account it laid an 

 egg after its fall, which was broken. I was a tolerable ornithologist 

 for a school-boy, but the yellow claws and strange markings of my 

 bird puzzled me to identify it with any of the English hawks, and I 

 made a drawing of it, sufficiently accurate to recognise it by. It was 

 fortunate I did so, for the bird, which was very wild and untameable, 

 escaped after a few days' captivity, and was probably killed, as it had 

 one wing clipped. Some years after, on showing the sketch at Ox- 

 ford to Mr. N. C. Strickland, he recognised it as identical with one of 

 which he had a drawing, taken from a bird shot several years before 

 in Yorkshire ; but neither he nor I knew the species, till we saw the 

 bird in the Zoological Gardens. Both these specimens were females. . 

 I may notice one character which I never saw expressed in any figure 

 — the lower bars on the tail being forked or divided at the side. 

 Gould's plate shows only the under side of the tail of the female, in 

 which position this is not visible. 



The white or yellowish claws are usually considered as confined to 

 this species and the lesser kestril {Falco tinn^inc uloides) ; but I once 

 had a tame kestril [F. tinnuncnlus), in which two claws on each foot 

 had become white in the course of several years, and the others were be- 

 ginning to change their colour when the bird died. — -Frederick Holme^ 

 M.A., FZ.S,; aC.C. Oxford, January 29, 1843. 



Note on the occurrence of the Cassian Heron, (Ardea comataj.f 



* Falco vespertinus^ Gm., and Doubleday's Nomenclature, 

 f Squacco Heron. l.upluLs raUoides, Bonap. and Doul)leday*s Nomenclature. 



