Early in the month, a brother of mine obtained a Spotted Redshank at the point where the Frome enters the estuary, a bird which I never happened to meet with here before, although no doubt it occurs here annually. Curlews and Sheldrakes breed in some numbers round the harbour, and will no doubt gradually increase in consequence of the protection afforded to them. The Sheldrakes leave us about September, and we see no more of them until the first hard weather before Christmas, which, if severe, brings in a good many, some of these stopping and bringing up their young. I only saw one Grey Phalarope last season, on the 16th October, in South Deeps, at the mouth of the harbour. On the 17th I saw the first Northern Diver, at the Half-way Diver buoy, not far from Poole, and I shot it with my punt-gun. It was, however, an immature bird, weighing nine pounds. On the 1st November I saw a beautiful adult bird of this species in Studland Bay, but failed to obtain it. On 12th November, a man employed on the bridge where the railway spans the estuary between Wareham and Poole, caught a specimen of the Fork-tailed Petrel alive, the day after the very severe gale. On the 20th of the same month a Swallow was flying backwards and forwards, on the south front of our house, nearly the whole day. On the 21st February, a family of young Song Thrushes left the nest in which they were hatched, in a small thicket close to the house. An unusual number of sprats in Poole Bay, about the beginning of January, brought a large number of Kittiwakes, Guillemots, Razorbills and Red-throated Divers, and an unusual show of Gannets. These fine birds do not plunge for the sprats as for larger fish, hut skim along the top of the water, and occasionally get so gorged as to be unable to get on the wing. I have noticed them in this state, particularly at the slack of the tide. A few Oystercatchers arrived the first week in March to have a look at their breeding-places. There have been none about the mud-flats since October. The Black-headed Gulls were assuming their spring plumage for a month previously, and Snipes occasionally drumming for a still longer period. About the beginning of April a pair or two of Sandwich Terns nearly always make their appearance, and in August a lot of young ones are to be seen about, the buoys at the harbour-mouth being a favourite place of theirs. They may possibly breed here, but I have never had any proof of it.—T.M. Pike (Westport, Wareham).
Ornithological Notes from Devon.—An Iceland Gull was killed in Plymouth Sound on December 1st. The plumage was nearly white, with very faint markings of brown; indeed so faint that I should think at the next moult the back would have assumed the light bluish gray of the adult state. On the 3rd I saw two Black Redstarts on the coast, and watched a Northern Diver having a long struggle with an eel, which it had some difficulty in mastering. I also observed a flock of about a dozen Purple
