NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
i35 
A Feline Angler. — As it is a general idea that cats have a great objection 
to putting their feet in water, it will perhaps be interesting to know that, where 
fish is a bait, this objection is overcome. 
A cat of mine is very fond of catching the small and seemingly unattractive 
fish in the river Thames. He is a large silver-grey tabby, a very handsome speci- 
men of his kind. On bright days he may often be seen sitting in our boathouse 
watching the ebb and flow of the water, now and then eagerly dipping his paw 
into the shallow pools left behind the landing stage, and thus he secures the poor 
belated fish he finds stranded there. These fish, as far as we know, are small 
roach and dace. “ Moses,’’ who is now a most expert angler, will amuse himself 
for hours with this sport until the tide has gone down and left the pools dry. 
He then returns to the house and turns up his nose (which, by the way, is a lovely 
terra-cotta colour) at the dainty morsels of food we may offer him which have 
quite lost their charm. 
“ Moses” will sometimes accept the fish the cook prepares for him, and is not 
averse to a stray bird he may catch in the garden, but I think he much prefers the 
tiny fish he gets on his own account when he thinks no one is watching him. 
Elena Clarke. 
Shrews. — Our rural postman asked me, a couple of weeks ago, when we 
had rather severe frosts, why it was he saw so many dead “shrews” on the 
road ? He said he asked some old people about it, and they said “ a shrew can 
never cross a road.” I scarcely believed that, and my explanation was that if he 
had searched the grass in the fields he would have found just as many. They 
came out rather soon and were killed by the frost. Am I right ? 
Charnirood Forest, W. R. T. 
May 2, 1903. 
Spare the Birds. — The Illustrated Scientific News for May gives the 
following interesting note, taken from a recent publication devoted to the interest 
of planters in the Southern United States: “ In a single day the stomach of a 
quail contained 101 potato beetles, and that of another quail 500 chinch bugs. 
A yellow-billed cuckoo shot at six o’clock in the morning contained 43 cater- 
pillars, and another cuckoo 217 web worms. A robin had eaten 175 caterpillars 
and the stomachs of four chickadees contained 1,028 eggs of the cankerworm. 
Four others contained 600 eggs and 105 mature insects, and it is said that a 
single chickadee will eat 5,000 eggs of this worm in a day. It has been estimated 
that a barn swallow will destroy from 5,000 to 10,000 flies and other insects every 
week. In the crop of a dove were found 7,500 weed seeds.” 
Chickadee is the popular name of the American black-capped titmouse, Parus 
atricapillus. 
Carlyle Lodge, Chas. E. J. Hannett. 
Canonbury Place, N. 
May 8. 
Trays for feeding birds. -I have a wooden tray tied by a string at each end 
to thin pliable sticks four feet high, on which food is placed for the birds in hard 
weather. To this robins, tits, and a few other birds freely resort, but sparrows 
will not venture owing to its unsteadiness, although they feed readily enough on 
the ground beneath. Long-tailed field-mice climb the sticks and down the string 
to the tray night after night. They also attack cocoa-nuts suspended by string on 
sticks. Next winter I shall try thin brass wire instead of string, which I think will 
checkmate the mice. 
Market Weston, Thetford, Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
May, 1903. 
Cro\Y 3 at Montreux. — I notice from some remarks at p. 95 of your May 
number that the identity of the Chocard des Alpes referred to at p. 75 of the April 
issue is not generally recognised by your readers. Not only does the description 
leave no room for doubt as to the species, but I have myself seen the birds about 
the higher hills above and behind Montreux. It is the common Alpine Chough, 
Pyrrhocorax alpinus. 
This species may be readily distinguished from our mis-called “ Cornish ” 
Chough by its yellow and comparatively shorter and straighter bill. 
