ORNITHOLOGY OF OXFORDSHIRE. 19 



A Song Thrush sang from rny barn roof ridge this afternoon. 

 Rather a wet day. 



4th. — The Lesser Whitethroat sings nearly every day in a 

 bird-cherry tree (Primus ixidus), the branches of which come 

 close to some of the windows. I can thus listen to the song at 

 very close quarters. The bird sings at pretty regular intervals. 

 His warbling notes, which precede the outburst, are sometimes 

 really very good and rich, but low in tone and not very numerous — 

 often hurried, so that at a distance they are often not heard. 

 They vary a good deal, and occasionally, in style, remind one of 

 the notes of the Orphean Warbler. In these cases they might 

 be set down as therut therut therut ; but this kind of prelude is 

 rarely heard, and the notes are usually of a warbling nature. 



7tb. — On April 15th I set up in the shrubbery a nesting-box 

 made out of a piece of an old pump — the fondness of Tits for a pump 

 as a nesting site being well known. A pair of Greater Titmice had 

 completed a nest in it by the oOth. On the morning (about 

 10.30 a.m.) of May 1st Mr. A. H. Macpherson and I looked into 

 it and found it empty. On the 4th I saw the bird on the nest, 

 and to-day the nest contained eight eggs. Even supposing an 

 egg was laid on the 1st, after we looked into the nest, the bird 

 must have laid two eggs in one day. 



14th. — Found a Jay's nest with live eggs in a thorn bush in 

 a small ash-pole spinney at South Newington. The Jay rarely 

 breeds here. Turtle Dove. 



15th. — Heard the resonant notes of the Wryneck, now a rare 

 bird here, from this house. Several Spotted Flycatchers appeared 

 in the garden for the first time this year. They were fighting 

 and pairing. A pair of Wrens whose nest was torn by a Cat 

 from an ivy-grown stem, are building again in the same spot. I 

 imagine it is the same pair. 



18th. — Starling feeding young. 



27th. — Flycatchers have one egg in a nest built in half a 

 cocoanut-shell fixed under the eaves of a wall. A Nightingale 

 established at Bloxham Grove. 



June 1st to 15th — In Belgium. 



20th. — Mr. H. G. Thompson saw a white variety among a 

 flock of Starlings near Headington. 



23rd.— Cuckoo still sings. Examined at Mr. Bartlett's a 



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