78 
NATURE NOTES. 
Thrushes and Drink. — Under this heading a writer in the Echo of March 
2nd says ; — “ It has come to my knowledge, not for the first time I am sorry to 
say, that a nest of thrushes can be obtained for a drink at a ‘ pub ’ not many 
yards from Battersea Park. The birds are one of its features, and their nests 
should be protected. There are some of the employes not free from taint. The 
writer has been promised a nest. Try and stop bird-nesting in the park, and you 
will be thanked by those who ramble therein.” No name is attached to the letter, 
but if the statement be accurate, we beg to call the attention of the London 
County Council, on which Selbornian views are represented, to an occurrence 
which reflects seriously upon those responsible for the care of the Parks. 
A Choice Combination. — What do you think of the following combina- 
tion ? I fancy you may deprecate more than one part of the simple news. The 
other day Lord Ribblesdale and the royal stag-hounds came our way ; and, 
after a long and devious chase, the stag, crossing and recrossing the Thames, 
was at last caught uninjured ; but a village girl saw him with his hind feet 
“ hitched ” on a barbed wire fence put up by the agents of an absentee land- 
owner to stop up a much-used footpath : hardly fair to the public in general, or 
to the individual stag ! 
Berkshire Village. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
An Early Wood Pigeon. — On February loth I picked up aywwy wood- 
pigeon (or stock dove, I am not sure which), which had been blown out of an 
i%’y clump the preceding night. This, I think, a very singular thing so early in 
the year. The bird was fully fledged, and had left the nest some little time, as 
the crop was full of food self gathered — not the half-digested substance furnished 
by the parents as food for their young before they leave the nest. The contents 
of the crop were beech-mast, and an equal quantity of the leaves of the lesser 
celandine, now springing up under the beeches. This bird must have been 
hatched about the end of Decemoer, and on referring to my notes, I find that 
wood-pigeons were cooing on the 24th and 28th of that month, in spite of the 
sharp frost then prevailing. In connection with this fact, a friend of mine, 
resident in Aberdeenshire, writes me as follows : “ I wish to draw your attention 
to what I think a strange circumstance, viz., wood-pigeons cooing at night 
during the past week (the end of January), between ten and eleven at night ; they 
have been cooing all over the plantations just as you may hear them in the early 
morning in the month of April.” My friend, I should say, is a good naturalist 
and a keen observer. 
Watford. GeORGE RoOPER. 
Natterjack Toad. — Over fifteen years ago, I and other members of our 
country local “ Science Gossip Society ” found the natterjack toad in some low 
sandy cliffs on the coast of Suffolk. They were in holes, some eight or twelve 
inches deep in the side of the cliff, perhaps several natterjacks congregated at the 
bottom of one hole. I kept some specimens alive in a bath half filled with light 
dry earth, and it was most interesting to watch them in this. They worked holes 
for themselves in the earth, and would sit in them, looking out in a most grave 
and comical manner. They readily allowed me to see them eat, and would snap 
up an ant dropped in front of them, or a small spider offered hanging at the end 
of one of his own threads. This “snapping up” was so rapid that it had the 
appearance of just a flash of a greyish something, coupled with the disappearance 
of the insect. In reality it was the rapid flicking out of the tongue, and its as 
rapid withdrawal with the insect. On one occasion two of my natterjacks were 
sitting solemnly side by side ; a small fly settled on the eye of one, he gravely 
winked the eye, causing the fly to crawl a little higher up ; his brother natterjack 
turned half round, and, with a flick of the tongue, swallowed the fly. 
J. A. Eisdell. 
The Sparrow once more. — I should be extremely sorry to resuscitate the 
word}’ warfare prevailing in your columns last year anent the sparrow, but I 
think it would interest your readers to note what Gilbert M'hite has to say on the 
