70 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



side by side about two inches apart, and one covering them, and upon 

 lifting the top brick, there was a Wheatear's nest with four fresh eggs. 

 He informed me that he had several of these " traps " — as he described 

 them — on the shingle, which I understood had been built during the 

 previous winter. I found several more nests later — one with young, in 

 a disused drain-pipe. I think the foregoing tends to show that when 

 birds favour a certain locality they will easily adapt themselves to the 

 surroundings. — P. W. Harvey (Kilmartin Avenue, Norbury Park, 

 S.W.). 



Great Grey Shrike in Dorset. — On the 29th of December last, when 

 out with my son, E. C. Linton, in the parish of Edmondsham, I saw 

 three birds looking rather larger than a Starling, which were quite 

 strange to us, and unknown in the district ; and, not being able at once 

 to name them, I sent off descriptive notes to the Rev. W. R. Linton, who 

 passed them on to the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain. On Monday, the 31st, 

 my son again saw the three birds, and got a nearer view of them, 

 and could distinguish one as being of brighter plumage, presumably a 

 male. With this clearer view of their markings we fixed on the Great 

 Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor) as the bird we had seen. During 

 January E. C. Linton, who had once again, three or four days later, 

 caught sight of one of birds, visited the South Kensington Museum for 

 the purpose of identifying them, and was completely satisfied as to 

 their identity with the Great Grey Shrike. Meantime I had received 

 Mr. Jourdain's opinion that this was the bird we had seen. There are 

 some eight records of this species in the ' Birds of Dorset ' (1887), the 

 last of which is dated 1872. At the time the birds we saw visited 

 Edmondsham almost the whole of Britain except the south-west was 

 under snow, and severe weather no doubt drove them to a district 

 where the little snow that had fallen did not lie. — E. F. Linton 

 (Edmondsham Rectory, Salisbury). 



Hawfinch at Ballinasloe, Co. Galway. — A former curate of mine, 

 the Rev. W. Forster, kindly sent me a specimen of a Hawfinch 

 (Coccothraustes vulgaris), which he shot near his house at Mount Ber- 

 nard, Ballinasloe, on 31st December last. He tells me that he " saw 

 the bird twice, with about ten days' interval. It was in exactly the 

 same place each time, outside the drawing-room window on the gravel. 

 There were perhaps two hundred Chaffinches with it, but none 

 others of its own kind. There was a copper-beech overhead. It may 

 have been picking the nuts, though I think it probable it was only 

 picking gravel. I did not hear it utter any note." I sent the bird 

 to my friend Mr. Williams, Dame Street, Dublin, who says that its 



