58 



The Naturalist. 



years the common sandpiper has bred annually at the Many wells 

 reservoir, and although its banks are fringed with trees, at least half-way 

 around, and this is the part they more particularly affect, I have never 

 observed them alight, even once, on trees. When the reservoir has been 

 full I have several times seen them traverse its whole length in search of 

 a suitable perching place. A pair of sandpipers, however, which my 

 brother and I saw in the Goit Stock Valley in the summer of 1876, and 

 which were evidently breeding, perched on the lower branches of trees 

 with great facility, bobbing their tails up and down as they flew from tree 

 to tree, much after the manner of wagtails. This idiosyncrasy cannot be 

 explained, I think, on Mr. Clarke's theory, since the physical aspect — at 

 least in its arboreal character — of the locality in the Goit Stock Valley 

 differed in no material respect from Manywells. Would it afford a 

 sufficient eclaircissement of the matter to presume that the above birds 

 were of continental extraction ? Another instance I may cite, although 

 belonging to another order of birds, without perhaps being thought 

 irrelevant to the point at issue : A skylark's nest was built about 

 half a mile from this village, near the old main road leading to Bradford : 

 when the nest contained young I used to see one of the old birds (I think 

 it was the female) frequently alight on the top of a high whitethorn 

 hedge about forty or fifty yards from the nest. This deviation from its 

 usual habits was in no way connected with exceptional physical conditions ; 

 within about ten yards from the nest was a wall which bounded the main 

 road, yet it as frequently alighted on the hedge as on the old wall. It 

 is therefore, obviously not for lack of apparently suitable perching 

 places that this abnormal habit can be accounted for. Nevertheless I am 

 free to confess that birds are by no means mere automata, impelled in all 

 their movements by blind instinct, but in some of their actions there 

 ajDpears to be indications of the faculty, if not of reason, at least of some- 

 thing very near akin to it. — E. P. P. Butterfield, Wilsden, September 

 10th. 



Dusky Petrel. — I had a specimen of the dusky petrel {Pufinus 

 ohscurus) brought to me to stuff on Friday evening last ; it is a male bird 

 in splendid feather. I think it as well to record this, as it is not in the 

 "List of the Birds of Wakefield" as published in the Naturalist. — 

 J. Spurling, 42, Northgate, Wakefield, Sept. 14th. 



Great-crested Grebe, &c., near Goole. — Three specimens of this 

 bird have been shot on the Ouse during the last three weeks. Mr. 

 Richardson reports the arrival of the redwing on the 1st inst. ; he saw 

 the chiffchaff the preceding day, and, shortly before, three young water- 

 rails and the parent bird. He states it to be the first time during fifty 

 years he has seen the young of the last-named bird. I saw the house 

 martin on the 12th, but have not observed it since. — Thomas Bunker, 

 Goole, 14th Oct. 



