NOTES AND QUEBIES. 389 



14th was a brilliant day, and at about 6 p.m. I watched a single Swift 

 for some time through my field-glasses till it went up quite out of 

 sight, possibly to start on its migration southward, as that was the 

 last I saw of them. During the last few years the Swift has been the 

 subject of several communications to this Journal, and in the volume 

 for 1898 (pp. 436, 485) there are two records of single birds being 

 seen in October ; but the fact of several remaining till nearly mid- 

 September seems worthy of record. Gilbert White, who at Selborne 

 had such excellent opportunities of studying the life-history of the 

 Swift, wrote in his twenty-first letter to Barrington, " They retire, as 

 to the main body of them, about the tenth of August, and sometimes 

 a few days sooner ; and every straggler invariably withdraws by the 

 twentieth''; and in a P.S. to his fifty-second letter to the same 

 correspondent he mentions the fact of a single Swift being seen on 

 Sept. 3rd, as if he regarded it as something quite extraordinary. On 

 Sept. 12th a young female Black-tailed Godwit was shot on the 

 Snettisham Marshes (which Mr. Clarke kindly showed me when he 

 had just skinned it), and the shooter said there was another with 

 it. On the loth I saw an immense gathering of Gulls on the mussel- 

 scalps opposite the Hunstanton lighthouse. There was a very low 

 spring-tide, leaving bare a great extent of feeding-ground, which was 

 literally white with Gulls. So far as I could judge, they were almost 

 all Common Gulls in adult plumage, or nearly so. The day was a 

 perfect one for making observations, with clear atmosphere and a 

 cloudless sky, and from the cliff-top these Gulls presented as charming 

 a picture of bird-life as one need wish to see. — Julian G. Tuck 

 (Tostock Bectory, Bury St. Edmunds). 



Bee-Eaters in Yorkshire. — About the middle of the month 

 (September) a gentleman at Bentham, on the borders of Yorkshire 

 and Lancashire, observed three curious birds round his bee-hives, and 

 saw one of them take up a position near the entrance to a hive and 

 swallow eight bees in quick succession. One of the birds was killed, 

 and proved to be a fine adult male of the very rare Bee-Eater (Merojjs 

 apiaster), which, on dissection, was found to have five working-bees 

 in its stomach. This is, I believe, the fourth occurrence of this 

 African species in Yorkshire, Spain being the nearest breeding-place 

 of the species to our islands. — H. W. Kobinson (Lansdowne House, 

 Lancaster). 



The Cuckoo and Twite.— In ' The Zoologist ' for 1904, pp. 313- 

 14, will be found a note of mine commenting on the alleged occurrence 



