192 
NATURE NOTES 
could have been picked up, and they were also to be found lying 
about in the adjacent fields whqre the herons have carried them 
to enjoy their contents undisturbed. 
Amongst the rooks here are several of a most pugnacious dis- 
position : they watch the herons, and often when one flies off by 
itself these rooks persecute and mob it unmercifully. So far as 
I have observed, the heron rarely attempts to retaliate with its 
bayonet-like bill. Several newspapers lately have been lamenting 
the disappearance of the kingfisher from our streams and lakes. 
It is not quite extinct in this neighbourhood, I am happy to say. 
One has been seen several times this winter both here and at a 
lake in an adjoining estate. It is little wonder that these birds 
are becoming rare, for they afford an irresistible temptation to 
the greedy gunner. I was grieved to see in one cottage alone, 
no fewer than fifteen stuffed kingfishers under glass shades — a 
truly mortifying sight to a naturalist. 
The bright - plumaged jay has increased considerably on 
this estate during the last few years ; this, I think, is attri- 
butable to the growth of young trees on Stanmore common. Jays 
love to flit about in small thickets, and these they find on our 
common, since within the last ten years the furze having been 
nearly destroyed by constant fires, groves of birch-trees have re- 
placed it, and have turned the common into a wooded heath. 
A few peewits (lapwings) are always to be seen on the 
ploughed land of this farm, never more at a time than seven or 
eight pairs, and yet within a short distance nearer the reservoir 
these birds congregated by thousands during the past winter, the 
brown ploughed ground being a dappled grey colour with the 
multitudes of busy insect-hunting peewits. They are very shy, and 
if one attempts to get too close to them they rise and wheel round 
and round in a most graceful manner, settling again at some little 
distance. Occasionally they go off to the side of the reservoir, 
but the ploughed fields are their favourite haunts, where their 
incessant cries remind me very much of the flocks of sea-fowl on 
the open fields of the Channel Islands and the rocky islets of the 
Scillies. 
A mild winter such as we have experienced (1898-99) is 
always associated with large flocks of wild duck. Ever since 
last November the lakes here have been alive with mallard and 
wild duck. In the early evening their cries, with those of the 
coots and moorhens, recalled the lonely fen country rather than 
a quiet piece of water within twelve miles of the Marble .\rch. 
Last summer we missed from the farm-pond, where he lived in 
company with two domestic but dusky wives of the same 
variety, a fine East Indian drake. As we had on one or two 
occasions discovered a fox lurking about round the edges of the 
water, we naturally thought that he had taken the drake. I 
was, however, considerably surprised one evening, while watching 
the birds at the largest piece of water, to see this drake in com- 
pany with four or five brown wild ducks, paying them all 
