7930 



Birds. 



be all changed, when the north-east wind, arrives with its "blackthorn winter" in 

 April succeeding — 



" Ask not the cause why sullen spring 

 So long delays her flowers to bear, 

 Why warbling birds forget to sing 

 And winter storms invest the year." 



I fully anticipate that the first six days of April may be ten degrees colder than 

 those of February just expiring. — H. W. Newman; Hillside, Cheltenham, February 

 6, 1862. 



Song of Birds. — The Linnean name of the garden warbler was omitted in my 

 communication of January last (Zool. 7829) : the bird is the Silvia hortensis. — Id. 



Occurrence of the Common Buzzard at Rifley, near Lynn. — A fine adult male 

 specimen of this bird was sent to me a few days back for preservation. The brown 

 colour extended over nearly the whole body. — W. Wilson ; Lynn, January 13, 1862. 



Occurrence of the Short-toed L^arh (Alauda braehydactyla) and other rare Birds in 

 Hampshire. — It may be interesting to your ornithological readers to know that I have 

 now in my possession a living specimen of the short-toed lark {Alauda brachydactyla.) 

 It was caught by a hirdcatcher in the neighbourhood of Southampton. It is now 

 getting reconciled to its captivity; indeed, from the first, it was restless rather than 

 wild. Not knowing anything of its domestic habits I placed it in a large cage, with 

 perches, thus giving it the option of roostino: either on a perch or at the bottom of the 

 cage. It chose the perch, where it roosts on the same spot nightly, which makes it 

 probable that when at liberty it roosts in trees. A tuft of jjrass is kept in its cage, but 

 it does not appear to care for it. It spends the day in flitting from perch to perch, 

 occasionally running nlong the bottom of the cage, from end to end. Not knowing 

 what to feed it on, I at 6rst supplied it with bruised hemp-seed and bread-crumbs, 

 German paste, canary and maw seed ; it appears to prefer the hemp-seed and bread, 

 and does not eat the canary seed at all, and but little of the German paste. In order 

 to gain its confidence, I give it daily a couple of meal-worms, of which it appears 

 very fond. The way in which it treats the meal-worms is curious, and different from a 

 fauvette who hangs in a neighbouring cage, and who, upon getting one of those dainties, 

 gives it a pinch with his beak and a tap or two on the perch, and then bolts it whole ; 

 my short-toed friend, however, seizes the worm, pinches a hole in him near the head, 

 and then sucks out the entire contents of its interior, leaving the skin perfectly empty! 

 The only sound it has as yet favoured me with, is a clear and silvery call-note. Never 

 having seen one before, I am unable to decide if it be male or female. In Morris's 

 ' British Birds,' the male is described as having " chin, throat and breast, white." Now 

 my bird has no white anywhere about it, save the two outer feathers on either side of the 

 tail. The chin, throat and breast are of a lighter tint than the back, but by no means 

 white. It may be a female, or there may be a change of plumage in the wiuter. In other 

 respects the description answers well. The attitude and expression of the portrait in that 

 work are decidedly good ; the colouring not so good. The appearances of the short-toed 

 lark in Great Britain seem to have been few and far between. The man who caught 

 the one I have had once taken another ten years ago. I have looked through 

 the nineteen volumes of the 'Zoologist,' and the only notices of its appearance there 

 recorded are one in Sussex in 1854, in the possession of Mr. Swaysland, of Brighton, 

 and one shot at the Scilly Islands, by Mr. Augustus Pechell, in the same year. The 



