NOTES AND QUERIES. 195 



could not have sat side by side with the Blackbird, she must have 

 watched for an opportunity when the Blackbird was off to feed. 

 The Blackbird was known to be building somewhere in the ivy, but 

 the Eobin had not been noticed. — 0. V. Aplin (Bloxham, Oxon). 



Black-cheeked Love-birds Nesting in Cage. — A pair of Black- 

 cheeked Love-birds (Agapomis nigrigenis), kept last autumn in a cage 

 about three feet six inches square in the bird department at Messrs. 

 Gamage's, nested in a cocoanut husk and laid eggs. They did not 

 sit, but as the cage was only about five feet from the floor in such a 

 greatly frequented establishment, the fact of such a nervous species 

 as a Love-bird nesting in public at all seems to me sufficiently 

 notable to be worth recording. — C. T. Newmaech. 



Return of Summer Migrants to Old Haunts. — On April 29th we 

 saw the first Turtle-Dove, and from its actions there can be no doubt 

 that it is one of the birds which frequented our garden last year. It 

 came at once to a place near the front door, where the waste seed 

 from the bird-cages is thrown out, and in every way behaved like a 

 bird which felt entirely at home. Another has joined it, and both 

 allow one to watch them at about twenty yards' distance. We have 

 watched Turtle-Doves here for over twenty years, and they have 

 often become fairly tame as summer advanced, but these birds in 

 early May are much more like those which come to the garden in 

 July. My daughter, who lives a few miles away, is quite sure that a 

 Cuckoo she heard last year has returned ; she has a good ear for 

 music, and at once recognized a curious fault in the second note of 

 the song. For my own part, I feel as sure of the return of these 

 migrants as if they had been " ringed birds recovered." — Julian G. 

 Tuck (Tostock Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds). 



"Paget's Pochard" at Kew. — There are at present to be seen 

 on the pond at Kew two drakes like that figured in Stevenson's 

 ' Birds of Norfolk,' vol. iii. pi. iii. ; their eyes, however, are distinctly 

 yellow. They are full- winged, and, I hear, were bred here between 

 a male White-eyed and female Common Pochard, thus confirming the 

 origin attributed to this bird by Stevenson and others. A female, 

 almost exactly intermediate between the two species mentioned 

 (which the males are not), appears to be their sister. — F. Finn. 



Colour-change in soft parts of Birds of Prey. — I notice that in 

 the Bateleur Eagles (Helotarsus ecaudatus) in the Zoo the red of the 

 bare face and the feet, which becomes most intense when the bird is 

 indulging in its curious display and song, with raised but unopened 



