ORNITHOLOGY OF OXFORDSHIRE. 413 



three pounds was found on the banks of the Sorbrook yesterday, 

 and close to it the marks of an Otter, which marks I frequently 

 saw afterwards. I bought to-day a female Stoat, killed this 

 month near Huskott Mill, which, notwithstanding the mild 

 winter, was nearly white. 



28th. — Two Hawfinches visited the holly-tree by my window 

 several times. I watched one (a male) for nearly half an hour 

 at a distance of perhaps six feet from me. It was biting open 

 the berries to extract the seeds, sometimes leaving the berries 

 hanging on the tree, and sometimes pulling them off, and 

 mumbling them in its great beak until the seed was detached 

 from the skin and pulp. The bird was so close that I could hear 

 the little snapping noise made by its already bluish beak. It is 

 a quiet stolid bird when feeding, and very much resembles a 

 Greenfinch in that respect. The alarm-note when a bird flies 

 out of the tree is a thin shrill " cheek." Possibly the reason of 

 Hawfinches visiting gardens so much this winter is the failure of 

 the crop of haws in the open country. 



29th. — Blackbird's nest with three eggs. 



31st. — Kestrels pairing, and uttering a soft chatter, while 

 their aerial evolutions as they toyed round a group of trees 

 were most graceful. Eeceived the first Peewit's eggs (four) from 

 West Oxon, taken in a field which was being ploughed on the 

 29th. One was broken, the other three weighed just three 

 ounces. 



There is a grassy hillside in Milcomb parish, which, from im- 

 perfect drainage and the cold clayey nature of the soil, is at this 

 season usually very bare of pasture, that little being of a poor 

 quality and mossy. Gorse is inclined to spring up in places, 

 however much suppressed. The ridges and furrows run straight 

 down hill, relics of the fat days of farming when this land was 

 arable. Because of this barrenness, and its open aspect, the field 

 is the favourite breeding place of a few pairs of Peewits (others 

 nesting in the fields around, which are high -lying and poor bad 

 land), and I find it an interesting place on which to watch the 

 early breeding habits of these birds. I went up for the first time 

 this year on the 20th inst. The short grass was " whitey-brown," 

 with a shade of green; the furrows were wet. There was a nice 

 lot of birds about, and one pair mobbed me, screaming and 



