184 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



AYES. 



White Wagtails near Southport.— While walking along a bridle-road 

 within about two hundred yards of the shore on the north side of Southport, 

 on April '20th last, I noticed a pair of White Wagtails [Motacilla alba) 

 running about. Observing their fearlessness of my approach, I sat 

 down on a sand-hill close by, and watched them feeding only a few feet 

 from me. I noticed that one was a female, having much less black on her 

 head than the other. Suddenly a Pied Wagtail appeared, and drove the 

 white ones farther away. At high-water mark (the tide being out) I 

 noticed, within a distance of two or three hundred yards, more than half a 

 dozen White Wagtails scattered about, and concluded that a migration of 

 them was proceeding along the coast. — G. Townsend (Polefield, Prestwich, 

 near Manchester). 



[Several instances have been recorded of interbreeding between the 

 White and Pied Wagtails.— Ed.] 



The Vibrating Sounds of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. — I have 

 been much interested in reading the note by Mr. C. H. New respecting the 

 tapping sound of this species [Dendrocopus minor), [ante, p. 107). It is 

 fairly common in this district, and I have often wondered how such a 

 mysterious noise could be produced by the bird tapping with its bill on a 

 branch or trunk of a tree. In April of last year I was attracted to an 

 orchard on Milton Hill, Wells, by the sound in question. I located the 

 bird in the branches of an apple-tree, which it left, and flew to an oak in an 

 adjoining field. Here exactly the same sound was produced, but the bird 

 left the tree again as soon as I got within a few yards, and flew to an elm 

 growing in a hedge bordering the roadway, on the other side of which is a 

 plantation known as the Coombe. I went down into the road, and watched 

 the bird several minutes before it flew away ; here the same sound was 

 produced as from the apple- and oak-trees. I also noticed that whilst it 

 shifted restlessly about the very small branches at the top of the tree the 

 noise did not vary, resembling somewhat in miniature the sound uttered 

 by the Nightjar, or drawing a stick with great rapidity along iron railings. 

 I am inclined to believe the sound is uttered from the bird's throat, and 

 used as a call- or matiug-note during nesting-time. I have never to my 



