Colonel Leathes kindly sent me in the summer of 1875 two young fern-owls, taken from the nest in his woods near Yarmouth. I fed them on scraped beef and hard-boiled eggs, and they lived some weeks; they were very tame. The bristles round the sides of the mouth to assist in catching insects are very remarkable. ARRIVAL OF BIRDS, p. 74.-In order to give a comparative table of the arrival of birds at Selborne and in the neighbourhood of London, I give the following list. The London list is given on the authority of Mr. Davy, the bird-catcher: When the flycatcher has arrived we anticipate that all the soft meat tribe are here. When the bird-catchers come home about the 15th or 16th of April, they generally report that the swifts have arrived. The following birds stay to the end of August:-the cuckoo, the nightingale, the wryneck. This is a great migratory month. The following birds stay to the end of October :-house-swallow, martin, sand-martin. Swallows have been seen in Tottenham Court Road as late as the 5th of November. Swifts leave about the middle of August; they have been known to stay till the end of September.1 MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS FROM ENGLAND.-In September and October the greater portion of our summer visitants are nearly all gone or going, 1 A correspondent, "J.," thus writes in Land and Water:-"The swift, which visits us generally on the 5th of May, retires the earliest, seldom later than the 12th of August, although a few are occasionally later, and in one instance a swift was seen on the 26th of August." viz. the nightingale, redstart, wryneck, cuckoo (the old cuckoos are gone, but a few young are still left), flycatchers, warblers, turtle-doves, goatsuckers, tree-pipits, shrikes, grasshopper-larks. A few of the following still remain :-Blackcap, chiff-chaff, meadow pipit, White's wagtail, Ray's wagtail, willow-wren, wheatear, large and lesser whitethroat, &c. These are soft-billed or soft-meat birds, which leave England in the autumn. About the same time that these birds leave us, others arrive, such as goldfinches, woodlarks, skylarks, linnets, redpoles, twites, siskins, and snowbuntings. About the second week in September the flights of these commence, and last for three weeks or a month. The autumn arrivals are seed-eating birds. The London bird-catchers, at this "flight time," go down to the south coast for their harvest, and take large quantities of the arriving birds; many thousands are sent up weekly to London for cage birds, and to be kept for their song. At the end of March the birds which left us in September and October begin to return to this country. BIRDS OBSERVED AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, REGENT'S PARK.-The following is the list of Birds which had been captured or observed in the Zoological Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, by Mr. Edward Bartlett, son of Mr. Bartlett, the Superintendent (see Transactions of Zoological Society, 1863, p. 159):— Those marked * have been observed to breed in the Society's Gardens. BIRDS' CROPS, p. 78.-In his lectures on Geology at Oxford, my father used to tell us that the sellers of antiquities at Rome had a curious and clever way of giving the appearance of antiquity to modern gems. Having cut the device on the stones, they thrust them down the throat of a turkey into his gizzard; after the proper time had passed they killed the bird; the stones in the crop were then found to have assumed the corrugated appearance of antiquity from the grinding action of the hard coats of the turkey's gizzard. In my collection I have some fine specimens of stones found in guano polished by the action of birds' stomachs. SEDGEBIRD, p. 80.—It is very likely that the bird here mentioned by White was the reed-warbler, or reed-wren. If disturbed by any means during the night it immediately commences its song, which resembles a mixture of other songs of birds-a regular gibberish altogether. In some parts of the country they call it the "thousand songster." These birds partially resemble the reed-sparrow; they are migratory. The young birds do not come to their full plumage till the following spring. SONG THRUSH, p. 84.-The following is from my description of a day's bird-catching at Aldermaston Park-As it was very hot we sat down in the shade to rest, while Mr. Davy gave us a yarn about his birds. It was unusual for a thrush to be in song so late, viz., 17th August, as at this time these birds are in full moult. August, in fact, is the dullest month in the year for song. Nearly all the birds, being "sore in moult," hide away in damp, shady places. Mr. Davy has put the song of most birds into words. He repeated the words of a thrush's song, and I found by carefully listening that the bird does actually sing the following words : : Knee deep, knee deep, knee deep; Cherry du, cherry du, cherry du, cherry du; Pretty Joey, pretty Joey, pretty Joey. My readers should learn these words by heart, and listen to a thrush singing. They will find the thrush pronounces the above words as nearly as possible. Repeat them all, even when no bird is present, rapidly in a bird-like manner and see the effect. It is very difficult to "word" a blackbird's song. Mr. Davy can imitate a blackbird's song so well that he can bring Mr. Blackbird up to him to be caught, but he cannot put his song into words. BLACKBIRD'S NEST ORNAMENTED WITH LACE.-Mr. Hugh Hamilton, of Pinmore, Girvan, in Sept. 1875, wrote me as follows:-"In the month of May some laces were laid out on the washing-green folded all together. They were left out all night, but when looked for in the morning were not to be found. As there was a good deal of wind in the night it was thought they might have been blown over into a neighbour's garden, but the gardens were searched without success. About three weeks after, one of the neighbours' gardeners brought a blackbird's nest, with five eggs in it, to the owner of the lace, which he had found in a tree in his garden. It was festooned with the lace as in the photograph. There were three different kinds of lace-24 yards Lisle, 1 yard Mechlin, and 1 yard Valenciennes, besides several pieces of other lace worked in and out throughout the nest, which were destroyed in detaching it. I inclose a photograph which I took myself." Mr. Hamilton has allowed this photograph to be copied for this book. The reader will agree with me that it has been most beautifully drawn, and does great credit to the able pencil of Mr. Delamotte, of King's College. My answer was as follows:-"I have no doubt the blackbird used the lace in making its nest. An interesting question arises from this as to whether the blackbird had an idea that his nest would be ornamented with the lace. The bower-bird certainly uses ornamental substances in making his nest; it is a question if this bird had the same notions." The blackbird is a great mimic, or rather a true mocking-bird. If taken young he may be taught to whistle one or two-not more--tunes perfectly. Davy had a blackbird that would whistle, "Pop goes the weasel," and "Hey, jim along, jim along, Josey, hey, jim along, jim along, Joe." He would sing at any time at command. If any one wishes to try the experiment of training a blackbird, they must raise one or two young ones from the nest. As a rule two out of three will take the song taught them. The blackbird is a very pugnacious bird, and this is a drawback to his being kept in an aviary with other small birds. LITTLE WATER SHREW (Sorex fodiens), p. 85.-These little creatures eat insects and fish; their teeth are very beautiful. I find the stomach and intestines contain some dark fluid pulp-like matter. This I examined under the microscope, and found to be composed almost entirely of the horny cases and legs of minute water-insects. THE SHREW MOUSE, p. 182.-These little things are often found dead without any apparent mark of injury; some say that the cats kill them, but will not eat them. Shrew mice are silly things; they get into dry ditches and cart-ruts, then run up and down and worry themselves; they have not sense to get out of the rut, and so they lie down and perish. Some say that they die because they cannot get water; they are mostly found dead in numbers at the approach of autumn in hot, dry weather; they soon decompose after death. BLACKCAP, p. 87.-This bird is also called the "mock nightingale " and the "Norfolk nightingale," and is very easily kept in confinement. These birds do well upon such food as bread crumbs, bruised hemp |