NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
137 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
The Alpine Swift. — Some of your readers will perhaps be kind enough to 
let me know whether they have this year seen the Alpine swift {Cypsehis Melba) 
in England. It is distinguishable from the common swift by its greater size, its 
wings being broader and longer, its colour, which is a light mouse-brown, and 
also by its extraordinary swiftness of flight. Howard Saunders, in his British 
Birds, says it is a rare visitor to our country, and is not generally found far north 
of the Alps ; last year, however, I saw two in East Yorkshire, and wrote announc- 
ing the same in the Standard, and asking if anybody who had seen it elsewhere 
would kindly let me know. I heard from two gentlemen, one in Brighton, the 
other in Kent, who said they thought they must have seen the bird as described, 
having noticed a swift of unusual size and light brown colour, but did not know 
the name. A few days back I saw two at a small village, Godesberg, about a 
mile from Bonn, and yesterday I saw another here in Bonn when walking by the 
Rhine. This leads me to think that these birds must come further north than is 
generally supposed. White speaks of the same, I believe, as the great white- 
bellied swift of Gibraltar (Hirundo Melba). 
Bonn. M. Laws. 
Cockchafers (N.N., 1893, pp. 39, 57, 96). — This year cockchafers have 
been fairly abundant here. I first noticed them on June 3, but probably that was 
not their earliest appearance. 
Malvern Link, IVorcestershire. Richard F. Towndrow. 
Nightingales (p. 105). — Mr. W. J. C. Miller refers with some surprise to 
the absence of the nightingale in his native place, “ a seaside and woodland dis- 
trict of Devonshire.” In a similar district in South Wales, with which I was 
familiar during several years of my boyhood, and which was also a “ paradise of 
feathered songsters,” this bird has never, to my knowledge, been seen or heard 
excepting on an occasion many years ago, when about twenty or thirty nightingales 
were introduced, as I have been informed, by a gentleman resident in the neigh- 
bourhood, which left the district soon after their arrival and never returned. I 
can say the same with regard to every other sea-side place where I happen to have 
been during the all too short sojourn of this charming warbler in this country. I 
should be very glad to hear the experiences of others as to the absence of nightin- 
gales in seaside districts, and any causes that may be assigned for it. 
Hampstead. J. M. ^'oss. 
Flies Hybernating. — In December last I cut the head off a very big ivy 
stump. It was crammed with sparrows’ and starlings’ nests, but the curious thing 
was a vast congregation of minute flies (not midges, but scarcely bigger). They 
lay like dust on the ground. I took them up in handfuls, I swept them up, I 
shovelled them up, and when put into a wheelbarrow they covered the bottom to 
the depth of quite a quarter of an inch. They were all alive and moved, though 
drowsily, about ; there must have been half a bushel. 
Nascott House, Watford. George Rooi'ER. 
Summer Migrants. — The following are the dates on which I first had the 
pleasure of seeing or hearing some of the above this year here in East Suffolk : — 
Chift'chaff, March 27 ; wryneck, April 10 ; cuckoo, April 14 ; nightingale, April 
21 ; flycatcher, May 13. The redstart was here in the second week of April. 
The first winter aconites were in bloom in our garden on Christmas Eve ; the first 
snowdrop, January 20 ; first crocus, January 30. Daphne Mezereum (white var.) 
began to bloom on February 3 : lesser celandine, February 27. The chaffinch 
began to sing on February 26. 
Walpole Vicarage, Halesworth. \V. R. Tate. 
The order of arrival of the summer songsters is as follows at Melbourne, 
Derbyshire : — Sand martin, April 2 : chiffchaff, April 4 ; blackcap, April 10 ; red- 
start, April It ; cuckoo, April 15 : swallow, April 19 ; nightingale, May 10. 
Clift Cottage, Melbourne, Derby. Akihur Myers. 
