NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
55 
tree nol far from the dining-room window, and it frequently has one or two tits 
hard at work on it. Only the great tit and blue tit have come this winter, 
though the cole was about in the autumn. I cut both ends of the nut off and 
hang it so as to swing freely from the bough. Other birds I feed, on a table or 
stand made on purpose for them, with crumbs and seed. The top, which is 
eighteen inches square, has a narrow ledge round it to keep the crumbs on better, 
and a notch cut at each corner to let the rain run off. This top is fixed on a post, 
thirty inches high, that is let into the ground in the middle of a flower-bed, also 
quite close to the dining-room window. From the centre of the table a slight rod 
thirty-nine inches high runs up, with two small cross bars near the top for 
hanging nuts, &c. , on. Just now I have some Brazil nuts with both ends off, and 
find they are very popular, a blue tit constantly being on one, swinging head 
downwards. In the summer the rod is taken away and pots of flowers put on the 
stand, which with creeping plants growing underneath to cover the post, looks 
quite ornamental. The whole can of course be easily taken away. Such a table 
costs very little, whilst the pleasure it gives to a real lover of birds is very great. 
It attracts our little feathered friends quickly, is a daily interest and amusement, 
and is an easy way of getting on familiar terms with our “sisters the birds,” as 
•St. Francis so lovingly called them. 
L. K. 
How to attract Thrushes, &e. — A correspondent writes to inquire 
what it is desirable to put in shrubs so as to attract thrushes or blackbirds to nest 
in them. 
Early Nesting. — A member writes that there is at the present time a 
starling’s nest with young in it in a tree in a yard in Great Ormond Street, 
Bloomsbury. 
Skylark. — Cold and hard weather has made most of our songsters a little 
late this year before they commence their music. (Jn Sunday last, the 3rd inst., 
I heard a skylark singing for the first time for the year, and on two distinct 
occasions. Perhaps this date will be useful for comparison to other readers of 
Nature Notes in different districts. The wren commenced its song (it has 
been silent during the fall of the year) on Tanuary 13th ult. 
Penzance, Arthur W. IIext Harvey. 
February 8, 1901. 
Duck. — The hard weather which set in with the new year brought with it, 
to this district, several species of wild duck. On a pool, a short distance from 
here, I saw ten common Pochard, including three beautiful drakes, and a fine 
drake scaup in full plumage, and I believe others of this species have been shot. 
I have also heard of a very handsome specimen of the Shoveler being shot about 
seven miles away. Scaup are rather scarce in this district, only a very few being 
obtained every winter. The Pochard are still here, and when I last saw them 
(on the 3rd inst.) they had been joined by two more drakes. 
Penzance, Arthur \V. IIext Harvey. 
February 8, 1901. 
An Escaped Cockatoo with Flocks of Rooks. — A great amount of 
curiosity has been aroused in this locality by the fact that for several months past 
a white cockatoo has been seen feeding out on the meadows with its black 
companions, the rooks, and it would have been interesting and instructiv'e to- 
have ascertained the exact food on which it existed through the autumn and 
winter, until about a fortnight since, when some thoughtless idiot gave it the 
usual dose of shot out of mere thoughtless, cruel curiosity. I was at the trouble 
to write to at least half-a-dozen papers circulating in the district, to try to save 
its life, but failed in the end. I had interested myself very much to try to find 
out where it escaped, but the nearest I can make out is that one answering the 
description, and at a somewhat earlier date, escaped with a broken chain to its 
leg, as this had, from Bucks, and that it also took to the company of rooks. 
The probability is that it went off with fresh colonies of rooks in a morning, as 
in some districts — Kagley, for instance, in the Marquis of Hertford’s Wood — 
