302 MR. O. V. APLIN ON THE DISTRIBUTION IN GREAT BRITAIN 
• • • • It is numerous over every part of Berkshire and 
Buckinghamshire, and breeds abundantly.” An old woman, who 
lor years sold eggs taken in the neighbourhood of Eton and 
Windsor, received (about 1868) about ten eggs, on an average, per 
diem ( vide Mr. A. W. M. Clark Kennedy’s ‘ Birds of Berks and 
Bucks,’ 1868, p. 72). 
I)r. Lamb (about 1 S 1 4) wrote: “Bare about Newbury; very 
common about Reading. Are partial to former breeding places ” 
( Ornitliologia Bercheria, ‘Zoologist,’ 1880, p. 313). At Newbury, 
at the present day, the late Mr. Montagu H. C. Palmer wrote (in 
a recent edition of Hawkins’ ‘ Guide to Newbury’) : “ By no means 
rare in our neighbourhood ; never a year goes by but I see its eggs 
and the bird itself.” I was informed that a pair were killed near 
Newbury in the summer of 1891, and in the same year I saw a pair 
on some French bean sticks in a garden on the outskirts of the 
town on the 30th August. At Reading, some fifteen years ago, 
1 have seen it, and the nest was uncommonly found at that date. 
The Rev. B. D’Oyly Aplin saw several in his garden at Coleshill, 
near Amersham,on the top of the Chiltern Hills, in Buckinghamshire, 
in August, 1891, and thinks a brood was hatched not far off 
(in lit.). He used to observe the birds every year in the neigh- 
bourhood of Great Horwood, near Winslow. 
“ The place that of all others,” writes the Rev. G. C. Green, 
“ I have found to abound most in Red-backed Shrikes was the 
neighbourhood of Eton and Windsor — at least it did so when 
I was an Eton boy” (in lit.). 
Mr. Arthur H. Macpherson writes: “I have seen it near Radley, 
. . . . and once or twice near Abingdon early in the summer 
term of 1888” (in lit.). 
Mr. W. W. Fowler also informs me that there are generally 
some about Radley. 
FIertfordshire. From the entries relating to this species in 
the valuable and interesting series of Notes on Birds observed in 
Hertfordshire (1880-1887), communicated by my late acquaintance 
and correspondent, Mr. .1. E. Littleboy, to the ‘ Transactions of 
the Hertfordshire Natural History Society,’ I gather that the 
Red-backed Shrike is a tolerably abundant visitor to this county ; 
especially to the neighbourhood of Port Yale (where as many as 
four nests have been discovered in a season). Royston ; Nortonbury ; 
