392 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



quaint remark made in the following year by the Manx servant who 

 attended to them : " It is not tamer they are getting, but wilder," and 

 soon afterwards they were set at liberty. In August of the present year 

 I saw a pair of Stock-Doves near St. Anne's Head. With reference to 

 the Tree-Sparrow, I may observe that my friend Mr. J. C. Bacon in- 

 forms me he has known of its nesting in the garden at Seafield for 

 several years past. — T. H. Nelson (The Cliffe, Eedcar). 



Black-winged Pratincole in Sussex. — On July 18th last a Black- 

 winged Pratincole (Glareola melanoptera, Nordmann) was shot near 

 Eye, and, having been sent to St. Leonards for preservation, was 

 brought in the flesh for my inspection. It was carefully sexed, and 

 proved to be a female. This forms the second recorded occurrence of 

 G. melanoptera in Britain (cf. Dr. N. F. Ticehurst, Bull. B. 0. Club, 

 xiii. p. 78, June 30th, 1903. The bird recorded by Dr. Ticehurst was 

 a male, and somewhat brighter than the present specimen). For 

 obvious reasons I am precluded from giving fuller particulars — a 

 circumstance I much deplore, as the occurrence of the species so far 

 westward is very noteworthy. G. melanoptera differs from G. pratincola 

 chiefly in having the under wing-coverts and axillaries black instead of 

 chestnut. Mr. H. E. Dresser gives the summer range as " South-east 

 Europe, in Russia north to about 56|° N.lat. ; . . . Asia Minor and Asia 

 east to the Altai Mountains " (' Manual of Palaearctic Birds,' ii. p. 730). 

 W. Buskin Butterfield (St. Leonards-on-Sea). 



Little Stint (Tringa minuta) inland in Cheshire. — A sand-spit at the 

 mouth of a little brook which flows into the mere at Great Budworth 

 often serves as a halting-place for wading birds on passage. Here, on 

 Aug. 29th, I found a Little Stint feeding at the water's edge. The 

 bird, as is the wont of its species, was extremely tame, and during the 

 half-hour I spent with it allowed me to repeatedly approach within 

 five paces. That distance, however, marked the limit of its confidence, 

 and it evaded any attempt at a nearer approach by flying out over the 

 mere, only to return to the spit again and resume its feeding a few 

 yards further away. When on the wing it constantly uttered a soft, 

 low, trisyllabic note. Before taking flight it sometimes retreated, 

 wading belly-deep in the water, and once or twice it swam for a few 

 inches. At such close quarters I could see its black bill and legs and 

 the details of its plumage very clearly, and was even able to make out 

 its hind toes when it ran along the sand. It was a young bird in 

 autumn dress, having white feathers on the scapulars, and an ill- 

 defined and hardly perceptible huffish band on the breast ; the rest of 

 the under parts were white. The wing-coverts and the long secondaries 



