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NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



Lesser Shrew and Bank Vole in Berks. — I have never met with 

 either of these little mammals in the part of Berkshire with which t am 

 most familiar. Their congeners appear to be common enough. I should 

 like to know whether either species has been satisfactorily identified as 

 occurring in Berkshire. The Microtus glareolus, or Bank Vole, is no doubt 

 found in Berkshire, though I have never chanced to come across it ; but as 

 regards Sorex minutus (the Lesser Shrew), its occurrence is not so probable. 

 Any information therefore would be welcome. — W. H. Warner (Fyfield, 

 near Abingdon). 



AVES. 



Note on the Nesting Habits of the Sparrow-Hawk.— The Sparrow- 

 Hawk (Accipiter nisus) is such a well-known bird that it seems hardly 

 possible that any of its habits and ways should have escaped the notice of 

 so many observers. Yet the following fact in the nesting economy of this 

 Hawk still appears — as far as I know — to stand unrecorded. My know- 

 ledge of the Sparrow-Hawk has been confined chiefly to the eastern part of 

 Fifeshire, in Scotland, where the bird is common and generally met with. 

 When out looking for the eggs of the Long-eared Owl, in the latter days of 

 March or the beginning of April, we used on these occasions to have a look 

 round in those parts of the woods to which the Sparrow-Hawks returned 

 from year to year with almost unfailing regularity for the purpose of rearing 

 their young ; and as a result of these observations we found that, though 

 the Sparrow-Hawk does not, as a general rule (in Fife), begin to sit till the 

 second or third week in May, she invariably begins to build her nest about 

 the first week in April, or even, should the weather be warm, in the last 

 days of March. At this time the outer rim only (composed, as a rule, of 

 larch-twigs) of the nest is completed, and is so left until about a week before 

 the laying of the first egg, when the bowl is added, this latter being gener- 

 ally made of small birch-twigs, and lined with pieces of Scotch fir and bark 

 about the size of a florin. The nest was invariably placed on a branch well 

 out from the main trunk, though more rarely in the " breek " of the tree. 

 The tail of the sitting bird was generally to be seen projecting over the 

 edge of the nest. It would interest me to know if this strange nesting 



