374 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



During a very dry spell in early August, several Common 

 Snipe visited Breydon flats, an event that happens only when 

 the dry marshlands are utterly unahle to provide these birds 

 with food. 



August 24th. — Several Greenshanks in Breydon. 



On close sultry days, as on August 24th, Starlings have a 

 curious habit of copying the Swallows, by following some of 

 their insect prey, and snapping them up on the wing overhead^ 

 This afternoon some species of insect, whether Diptera or Coleo- 

 ptera I could not ascertain, had tempted them to sail round and 

 round, now on parachutic outspread wing, now suddenly checking 

 themselves and briskly hawking after one that had escaped. 

 Their mandibles could be seen to snap at victims that one could 

 not distinctly discern. 



The hatching-season in my area would seem to have been a 

 bad one, so many chicks dying in the egg. My neighbour the 

 farmer at St. Olaves, who usually puts down twenty or thirty 

 hens, lost whole clutches, or only had a few odd birds hatched 

 off. I found similar complaints all round the neighbourhood, 

 the general opinion being that the concussion in the air caused 

 by falling bombs, and also a certain bombardment, which made 

 the very houses vibrate a few miles inland, had not a little to 

 do with the failure. I heard complaints in opposite quarters : 

 I do not know if one may accept this suggestion. Jary, the 

 Breydon watcher, assures me that very few young Terns have 

 been seen on Breydon this early autumn, as is mostly the case, 

 but he was emphatic on the point that young Black-headed 

 Gulls had been very plentiful in the end of July. 



August 26th. — The town Sparrows are all gone a-harvestingin 

 the country ; even my lot no longer come for Mrs. P.'s waste bread- 

 pieces. This bird would seem to be exceedingly partial to the 

 great dragon-fly, which it will pursue with some zest, and on 

 capturing it deftly bites off the wings, and then devours the 

 carcase. What insects the Sparrow will not eat would make a 

 shorter list, I think, than that of those it delights in. There 

 are times when spider hunts on sand-dunes, where ground 

 hunting-species resort, are quite a paying recreation for these 

 indefatigable little creatures. 



Black-backed Gulls. — There is still a considerable sprinkling 



