NOTES AND QUERIES. 475 



the longest being merely and indistinctly tipped, and the shortest and 

 outermost white its entire length, at least on the outer web. The red- 

 dish tawny mark in the wing was large and conspicuous, even when 

 the wings were closed ; but this may be a sexual characteristic, as on 

 dissection it proved to be a male. The under parts from beak to tail 

 were of an uniform pale grey, with a slight tinge of brown on the breast 

 and sides. Tlie legs (which were conspicuously longer than in the 

 common CkchIus canorus, from the thigh-feathers to the toes) were 

 bluish lead-colour, with a sort of silvery bloom on them, which latter 

 soon faded ; the claws were black, and it seemed to me the scales on 

 the legs were remarkably large, as only five in number occupied the 

 bare space. I should have mentioned, perhaps, that the beak was 

 longer and more decurved than in the common species, and the inside 

 of beak, which is well known to be bright orange-yellow in C. canorus, 

 was conspicuously spotted with black, especially on the lower part of 

 the palate, in the American bird. The tongue also had black markings 

 on it. The bird had been feeding freely upon the grubs of some saw- 

 fly, as the distended gizzard proved, the dark heads and spotted skins 

 of the grubs being unmistakable. 1 had observed very similar, if not 

 identical, grubs a few days previously upon a rose-tree, and wondered 

 if the comparatively mild autumn had been favourable to the develop- 

 ment of these particular flies, as several months ago the same tree was 

 almost stripped of its leaves by what I suppose was the same species 

 of larva. From the few ornithological works to which I have access, 

 it seems that this wandering bird is only a straggler to these islands, 

 and only in the autumn, mostly in October. The occurrence of this 

 species in Hampshire is not exactly a first record, as a specimen is 

 reported to have been found dead in the Isle of Wight in 1896 (Zool. 

 1897, p. 142), but no measurements or particulars of the bird were 

 given except that it was a male. In ' The Zoologist ' for 1895, p. 376, 

 Mr. Harting gave us a lucid description, and some interesting notes on 

 a specimen which had been picked up dead in Dorsetshire — this also 

 in the month of October ; and of the southern counties, Devon and 

 Cornwall claim the species in their county list of birds. 



Since writing the foregoing, I showed the bird to a man who is 

 often near the river with his gun, and without hesitation he said he 

 saw the bird, or another like it, more than a month ago, one evening 

 when he was out duck-shooting, and should have killed it but for the 

 large shot in his cartridges. This was some distance from where the 

 bird was shot, so there might have been more than one in the vicinity. 

 G". B. CoEBiN (Kingwood, Hants). 



Correction. — In a previous communication {aiite, p. 428, three 



