354 
quite satisfied about tbeni, it was only fair to my readers to show 
by the above detailed account exactly how much notice I took of 
the birds. I do not pretend to recognize the eggs of the Hobby, or 
of the Red-footed Falcon, from some small high-coloured specimens 
of Kestrel’s eggs ; but I have watched the Hawks so carefully in 
Foxley Wood that I could usually feel sure as to the species, sex, 
and frequently the age, of the individual as it left the nest. I have 
found cock Kestrels with barred tails (/.e. in immature plumage) 
nesting, but such nests never contained more than four eggs as a 
clutch. The older Kestrels lay five and six eggs. Whenever I 
start a small Hawk, or what at first appears to be a male Kestrel, 
from a nest, if I am not certain about his tail being the full-dress 
tftil of an adult cock Kestrel, I now think it necessary to obtain a 
better view of him or of the hen. I was not quite awake to this 
when I first found the five Hobby’s eggs, and I mistook the Hobby 
for a small male Kestrel. I was only undeceived when I saw that 
both the parent birds were so much smaller and so different from 
the hen Kestrel, which I p\it off her nest a few minutes later, the 
two Hobbies and the hen Kestrel being in my sight almost at the 
same moment. 
VII. 
THE LOMBARDY POPLAR (POPULUS FASTIGJATA), 
And its destruction in the County of Korfolk, in the winter 
OF 1880—81 ; BEING A SUMMARY OP REPLIES RECEIVED TO A 
CIRCULAR ISSUED BY THE SECRETARY OF THE NORFOLK AND 
Norwich Naturalists’ Society. 
By Herbert D, Geldart, V.P. 
Read ^ist Jan., 1882. 
The winter of 1880 — 81, which will be long remembered both for 
the severity of its frosts and the violence of its snowstorms, proved 
remarkably fatal to the Lombardy Poplar in this county ; and as it 
seemed that the damage done to these trees was not only greater in 
