HERTFORDSHIRE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
xli 
But the water which flowed from these borings would have gone 
into the river in springs; therefore all that trouble and expense 
might have been spared. No doubt the water in the Colne was 
much less than it was a good while ago, and would get less and 
less as the underground drain upon it increased. 
3. “Notes on Birds observed in Hertfordshire during the year 
1889.” By George Hooper, F.Z.S. (Transactions , Yol. YI, p. 89.) 
The Chairman asked whether the woodpecker mentioned was 
the larger or lesser spotted woodpecker; the larger appeared on the 
east side of Hertfordshire, and the lesser was more common in 
Surrey and Sussex. With regard to the eggs of the cuckoo, it 
seemed strange that a bird should not know its own eggs. He had 
seen a collection of forty cuckoo’s eggs, made for the purpose of 
showing that they did not correspond with the eggs of the birds 
in whose nests the cuckoo laid them. Birds seemed to have very 
little appreciation of colour. The same remark applied to spiders. 
As to the woodcock being in this neighbourhood, every year they 
heard of woodcocks being with them, and, so far as he could trace, 
they began to breed in the neighbourhood of Hoddesdon about 35 
years ago. It was now common to hear of a woodcock’s nest. He 
also asked Mr. Hooper if he had ever seen White’s thrush. 
Mr. Stradling, referring to the carelessness some birds show 
with regard to eggs, mentioned that he once put four crocodile’s 
eggs under a sitting hen. The hen sat until they were hatched 
out, and until then he did not know that a hen’s countenance was 
capable of so much expression. She looked at the young crocodiles 
for two hours with the utmost astonishment, and then turned round 
and killed them all. 
Mr. Lewis said that the bird he observed was the lesser spotted 
woodpecker, but that brought to him by Mr. John Dickenson, 
of Ban well’s Wood Farm, was the larger, as also was that brought 
to him by the son of Mr. John Boyes, of Beaumont’s Hall Farm, 
St. Albans. 
Dr. Brett said that he knew a man who used to catch forty 
or fifty kingfishers in the season at Cassio Bridge. He asked 
whether it were correct that rooks struck the ground with their 
beaks to bring out worms. He also mentioned albinism in the 
sparrow in the neighbourhood of Watford, and expressed the hope 
that the members would help Mr. Hooper by making observations 
on our birds and sending the results to him. 
Mr. Hooper said that he had never seen White’s thrush. Birds 
were very frequently shot, destroyed, or caught, but unless they 
fell into the hands of a naturalist, no one knew anything about 
them. With regard to the rooks, though worms might be brought 
out by their searching for the cockchafer grubs, he did not believe 
that they did it by reason, or, as the boys said, went to do it. He 
thought that the larger spotted woodpecker was rarer than the lesser 
one. Though a large number of kingfishers might have been 
observed, he did not think, from the habits of the birds, that they 
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