8000 



Birds. 



took the wren 8 were in the eaves of a thatched sheep-shed in Alhury Park, Herts." — 

 S. P. Saville. 



Notes on the Great Spotted Woodpecker. — I have to thank Mr. Saxby for his 

 interesting notes on the spotted woodpecker, in answer to my inquiry (Zool. 7847), in 

 which I expressed a wish to learn if this species had been similarly numerous in other 

 localities. Mr. Saxby expresses a wish to ascertain the sexes of these birds. I have 

 much pleasure in informing him that the examples which came under my notice were, 

 on the average, three females to one male. I am sorry I cannot furnish the direction 

 of the wind at the time. It was particularly observable that the captures were in 

 every case on the eastern side of the county (Cambridgeshire). — Id. 



Cuckoo depositing her Egg. — At a meeting of West Riding Consolidated Natu- 

 ralists' Society, Mr. Halliday wished to bring before the meeting a subject advocated 

 in the ' Zoologist,' respecting the means employed by the cuckoo in conveying her 

 egg into the nest. He read the paragraph in the 'Zoologist' which appeared to sup- 

 port the statement that the egg was first laid by the cuckoo, then taken up by the bill 

 and swallowed, and thus conveyed to and disgorged into the nest of what were to be 

 its foster-parents. Mr. Pickles, of Queenshead, said that as the lark's foot was so 

 formed that it could take its eggs in its claws and remove them from one nest to 

 another, he thought it a deal more probable that the cuckoo might use its foot in con- 

 veying its eggs, in preference to using the bill, which he thought was not calculated 

 at all as a means of conveyance of such delicate material. Mr. Heaton, of Halifax, 

 said that he had taken a young cuckoo from a wagtail's nest in a wall, and had to 

 pull the wall down before he could extract the intruder; and he would like to know 

 by what means the cuckoo had placed her egg in that nest. Several theories were 

 propounded, but no new facts were elicited, when Mr. Ellis said that it appeared none 

 of the members present had ever seen the cuckoo deposit her egg, and, as she was a 

 very shy bird, probably they never would : they must be satisfied for the present with 

 the fact that the same instinct which tells her to place her egg in some other bird's 

 nest for incubation, &c, will also teach her the best means of conveying it there. 



Note on Sabine s Snipe. — I have for a long time considered this bird to be only a 

 variety or " lusus" of the common snipe. I have had the opportunity of examining 

 several specimens, among them the one noticed in the ' Zoologist' for 1857 (Zool. 

 5593), killed in Norfolk ; and I think almost any one who will read Mr,Salvin's note 

 carefully will be satisfied that it is no species. Mr. Gatco'mbe says (Zool. 7939), " All 

 sportsmen who have killed this bird remark that it rises without noise." This is not 

 quite correct. Mr. Thompson says, in his * Birds of Ireland,' vol. ii. p. 277, of two 

 birds shot, one that rose with some common snipes did not " squeak ;" the other rose 

 in company with a common snipe and uttered a similar cry, and but for its colour 

 would have escaped, as the colour led the sportsman at first sight to believe it to be a 

 water rail. — F. Bond; Kingsbury, Middlesex, March 12, 1862. 



Jack Snipe. — It would appear that the jack snipe assumes the same dark plumage, 

 as the variety of the common snipe which has received the name of Sabine's suipe, 

 for I was sporting near Staines, in January of last year, when we flushed a jack snipe 

 which appeared, on the wing, to be quite black. My companion fired at it, but 

 missed. We could not find it again. It was, however, shot in the same field a few days 

 afterwards, and I am sorry to say consigned to the spit. The person who shot it told 

 me the plumage was suffused with brown, and not black as I supposed when I saw it 

 on the wing.— Id. 



