described by Mr Poulton, as to the influence upon larvæ and pupæ of boxes of various colours; and, when the perfect insects have emerged from the pupæ, and have crawled up the rough surface of the box to dry their wings, it will be a matter for the decision of the breeder whether the newly-hatched specimen is to be added to his collection, or to be "turned out" to take its chance in the struggle for existence in the world outside.

Movember

BIRD LIFE IN NOVEMBER

How often we say that we have never done or seen such and such a thing, and straightway, almost before the words have passed our lips, so to speak, an occasion offers, and what was in question is seen or experienced. In the chapter on bird life in August, I gave a letter from a gentleman living near Kingsbridge, in South Devon, about the species commonly met with in that neighbourhood, in which he said he had never met with a ring-ouzel or seen a grasshopper warbler there. A few days after he had written this, he tells me, he came upon both these birds.

The grasshopper warbler showed itself in the afternoon, chattering on the highest twig of a hedge, keeping always on the further side of it, as it moved on from twig to twig before Mr Boultbee as he walked. The ring-ouzel he found on Dartmoor, along the Avon side. A few paces further on the mate was disturbed from her nest, where he found she had been sitting on four eggs, which were hard-set this was about the end of June. He was the more pleased, he writes, because two well-known ornithologists had spent several days, a little before this, in looking for ring-ouzels, in vain. "The bird is not uncommon in the breeding season along the northern border of Dartmoor," continues my correspondent, "though even there you may spend many a day without seeing one; in the southern portion it is quite rarely seen. This nest was in the hollow of a bank, and might very well have been a blackbird's, and the eggs could not, with any degree of certainty, have been distinguished from those of the misselthrush." The ring-ouzel leaves us this month.

A bright and pleasant-looking bird is the dipper or water-ouzel, sometimes, but most inappropriately, called the water-crow, which does not belong to the same family as the ouzel aforementioned. Water-colley it is called in the south-western counties. I know it best

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in connection with the Manifold and the Dove, those two rivers that are most picturesque as they pass through the hilly part of Derbyshire and North Staffordshire, noisily running over pebbles and rocks and stones. It forsakes these often, as winter approaches, for the mouths of tidal rivers, and the flats and saltings of the seashore. In Lancashire, however, it will remain about the streams all through the winter, unless the weather be unusually severe. Bettydowker is a quaint name given to it there-a "dowker" being one who dips the head. It nests there on ledges of rock that overhang the streams, under bank sides, and behind waterfalls. The birds will begin to build, from the bottom, a large oval structure of moss and grass, and when the half is completed they then build down from the top until the nest is all covered over, an opening for egress being left at the side, nearer the bottom than the top, and looking down towards the stream. The wonder is that the birds contrive to make so heavy a structure cling to the wall of rock or stone. The dipper is most lively in its motions; it bobs about and cocks up its short tail very much like a wren does. It is supposed to do good service to fishers, as it feeds much on the larvae of the May-fly, the bank-fly, and others which are very destructive to the salmon spawning beds. It has the power of walking under the water, where it turns over the pebbles and fossicks about in search of the creepers. You may note it lifting its head above the water every now and again, whilst it is disturbing and catching its prey. Spiders and soft-shelled molluscs also suit it. The young can swim as soon as they leave the nest, and whilst chasing after water insects, both legs and wings are used, the latter as oars. The dipper's song, beginning in autumn, may often be heard through the winter; "Zeet-zeet!" is uttered rapidly, in varied tones. Four to six dullwhite eggs are laid, and three broods may be reared in one season, though, as a rule, there are two only. The eggs will be found as early as the first week in March, but more often April is their first nesting season. In the Field, some years ago, Mr L. H. Simpson, of Preston, told how he had come upon three nests of the water-ouzel, built one above the other, the roof of the lowest being the bottom of the one above it. In each of the lower two nests there were three fresh eggs, and in the top one four young birds newly hatched. This was under a bank that overhangs the river Brock, near Garstang.

We have noticed the tree but not the hedge-sparrow, one of the

most melodious of our small songsters. It is a tame and friendly bird. I have seen it come regularly to a kitchen door for food. A friend of mine watched one in his garden and about his doors for two years, and he discovered a curious fact about it. This bird had two mates and two nests for two successive seasons in the hedge of the garden, and he used to bring both wives up to the kitchen door for food. Hedge-accentor it is often called, because it is not of the same family as the common house-sparrow, which belongs to the genus passer. The accentors mostly live among the rocks; there is the Alpineaccentor, for instance; but some of them frequent lower ground, gardens and shrubberies. The one in question only resembles the common sparrow in its colouring, and even there its steely-blue head distinguishes it again from the other. It feeds on worms and insects, with a little grain and scraps in winter, and sings its little song all through the year. The eggs are a greenish-blue without spots, rough in texture; four to six of them there will be in the nest of moss, roots, bits of stick and dry grass, built in all kinds of hedges or roadside thickets. Indeed all the habits of this bird are quite unlike those of our bold little house-sparrow. Shuffle-wings is one name given to the hedge-accentor, because of a peculiar action of its wings. Dykie and Smokie are other names. The hedge-sparrow has been often alluded to as the foster parent of the intruding cuckoo. Shakespeare has mentioned it in this connection; but it is not the only nest, as we have seen, that is favoured by these bold birds; those of the pied wagtail and meadow-pipit are amongst those oftenest chosen. The Alpine-accentor is only a rare visitor in this country, never being known to breed here. It has a richer song than the congener we know so well, this being more like that of the lark, and it is uttered also as it ascends and descends.

During this month the nuthatch enjoys his diet of hazel and other nuts, whilst the ringouzel eats his fill of juniper berries and the rich red clusters of the mountain ash. Beech mast provides many a meal for the nuthatch, also acorns and corn if other things fail him. And he searches in the ground and on the bark of trees for insects, for he is a bird of many resources. There will be a rustle amongst the fallen leaves below some hazel hedge as you pass along, and there you see the quaint-looking short-tailed bird busy in quest of nuts that may have dropped from the trees. He had numbers of them before, from

the trees themselves, so this is his second harvest. "Twit-twit” he cries as he flits along.

In the water meadows that most delicate of our thrushes, the pretty redwing, with the rich orange-red of the flanks and of the under-feathers of the wings, and white throat streaked with dark brown, will probably be found. It comes to us in the autumn, but it cannot be said ever to breed in our country. Its arrival is not so much noticed as that of its congener the fieldfare, since its numbers are fewer, and it does not gather in such numbers as the latter species. In winter, parties of redwings go past our shores to more favoured spots in the south of Europe or the north of Africa. Small snails and insects form the principal part of its food. Now and again you may see a number of redwings feeding together near the shore, having apparently dropped down just for that purpose. I have known them do this near the Avon mouth, near to Clifton and Bristol. The redwing is the only member of the thrush family that breeds in Iceland, where he has his habitat in the brief northern summer. He can stand a great amount of cold if snow does not lie on the ground to hinder him in his quest for insect food. A wild, sweet and clear note he has, something like "trin-trin," or "tri-tri-tri." The Norwegian nightingale some have called him. Dr Bowdler Sharpe says of him, "It seems rather absurd that the redwing should be confounded with the song-thrush, but that this is frequently done we can bear witness, from the number of instances in which the latter bird has been brought to us at the British Museum during the last twenty years, in order to prove that the redwing really nests in this country. It may therefore be pointed out that the redwing has a broad white eyebrow, and dark brown ear coverts, and has the sides of the body and the underwing coverts and auxiliaries ruddy chestnut and not golden buff, as they are in the song-thrush." Although, as a rule, less gregarious than the fieldfare, it differs from the song-thrush also in the way it arrives in flocks. Whilst these feed, one or two of their number are stationary in the trees near as sentinels, so that at the least alarm they can join these among the branches. Although they have been styled Norwegian nightingales, they do not, I believe, ever really sing in this country; they only utter that flute-like note. Unlike the other thrushes, they do not, as a rule, care for odd scraps of food thrown out in cold weather; but Dr Bowdler Sharpe, who lives in Chiswick,