MISCELLANEOUS NOTES FROM YARMOUTH. 365 



can call the action by no other name — a still living field-mouse, 

 the thorn entering the throat and coming out at the back of the 

 head. The " cinnabar " caterpillar abounded on the plentiful 

 ragwort by hundreds : to these moths the Shrikes pay great 

 attention. Later on I one day observed a young Shrike fly to 

 the hedge-bottom and seize a belated caterpillar. It flew to an 

 outstanding twig, knocked the curling larva two or three times 

 sharply on the rough bark, and swallowed it. 



The Eed-hipped Bee swarmed the heather on a neighbouring 

 common by thousands. 



On one occasion, in June, I was watching a Greenfinch busy 

 among the groundsel, when a sneaking Water- Vole arrested my 

 attention as he slyly and with weasely cunning crept up through 

 the covering grass, evidently endeavouring to get close to the 

 bird. Whether he would really have attempted to seize the 

 Greenfinch, I can only surmise ; I know the rodent will 

 devour a dead Eoach. And the farmer hard by was emphatic 

 in his assertion that the Voles once made off with some newly 

 hatched chickens brought off in a hedgerow adjoining one of 

 his ditches. 



Night after night in July the hanger at the edge of the 

 marsh was tenanted by Nightjars. They nested freely on the 

 heathy common lands overlooking the Belton and St. Olave's 

 marshes. Sitting on the limbs of an aged elm the male birds 

 churned out their rattling notes in the gloaming. Their " music " 

 reminded me greatly of the sound produced by a knife-grinder 

 when busy with the emery wheel that is used after the rougher 

 sharpening of a knife upon the sandstone wheel. It was odd to 

 see them darting out and around with V-shaped flight, seizing 

 the ghostly moths and droning beetles that circled about the 

 trees. I noticed in showery weather these birds haunted belts 

 of thick firs, under the sheltering branches of which the insects 

 found tolerable hiding. 



July 13th. — When watching a Kestrel hovering above a 

 marsh hard by, I thought it seemed a considerable time making 

 up its mind to drop, as it evidently saw something attractive 

 below, when down it rushed, rising immediately with what I 

 took to be a dead Short-tailed Field- Vole in its talons. In 

 chatting with the farmer a few minutes after he assured me he 



