FIELD NOTES. 
6 / 
BIRDS. 
Decrease in Starlings at Harrogate. — This year, for the 
first time, we have no starlings coming to the food put out 
for the birds. We have had very few nesting birds about the 
immediate neighbourhood during the summer, but the decrease 
is most marked this winter. We have usually had twenty to 
thirty daily visitors, but five is the most I have seen at one 
time at the food, and days pass without one being seen. At 
the time of writing a pair of starlings are feeding a lusty brood 
at Lund House Green near here. The parents must have been 
‘ hard put ’ to provide food for them during the recent storm. — 
R. Fortune, Harrogate. 
Waxwings at Whitby. — Since the winter of 1910-11 the 
Waxwing has not been noticed in the Whitby district until 
this winter, when it has again made its appearance in con- 
siderable numbers. On 6th December six were observed and 
one shot. Two were captured on 10th December. On the 
22nd twenty-one were observed in a sheltered valley about 
a mile east of Whitby, three of them being captured. A 
flock of eight was seen on the 28th, and another bird fell a 
victim to the gun on 3rd January. Those birds which came 
under examination had from three to six of the red waxlike 
appendages attached to the ends of the secondaries. None 
of them had any appendages to the tail feathers. — Thos. 
Stephenson, Whitby. 
Starling Migration. — On the morning of Monday, 30th 
December last, I was passing along Spa Wood Top, about 
half a mile from Newsome, near Huddersfield, when, some 
distance away in the north-east, there was a peculiar dark 
mass which was rapidly approaching the direction I was 
taking. When overhead, at no great distance, I saw it was a 
huge flock of starlings, fully four to five hundred in number, 
heading strongly almost due south. The sun was shining from 
a blue sky on a snowy landscape, and the passing of the birds 
created quite a shadow. Some ten minutes later another 
flock of starlings, of smaller dimensions, also passed from, 
and heading to, the same direction as the larger flock, and 
moreover, the birds comprising this smaller flock were more 
widely extended. There is no winter roost of starlings within 
the neighbourhood of Newsome. After the tempestuous 
weather prevalent during the Christmas holidays, frost set 
in, and on the evening of the 29th December snow fell to a 
depth of about three inches, and on the evening of the 30th 
there was a further heavy snowfall. — W. E. L. Wattam, 
Newsome. 
1914 Feb. 1. 
