NOTES AND QUERIES.
AVES.
White Wagtails near Southport.—While walking along a bridle-road within about two hundred yards of the shore on the north side of Southport, on April 20th last, I noticed a pair of White Wagtails (Motacilla alba) running about. Observing their fearlessness of my approach, I sat down on a sand-hill close by, and watched them feeding only a few feet from me. I noticed that one was a female, having much less black on her head than the other. Suddenly a Pied Wagtail appeared, and drove the white ones farther away. At high-water mark (the tide being out) I noticed, within a distance of two or three hundred yards, more than half a dozen White Wagtails scattered about, and concluded that a migration of them was proceeding along the coast.—G. Townsend (Polefield, Prestwich, near Manchester).
[Several instances have been recorded of interbreeding between the White and Pied Wagtails.— Ed.]
The Vibrating Sounds of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.—I have been much interested in reading the note by Mr. C.H. New respecting the tapping sound of this species (Dendrocopus minor), (ante, p. 107). It is fairly common in this district, and I have often wondered how such a mysterious noise could be produced by the bird tapping with its bill on a branch or trunk of a tree. In April of last year I was attracted to an orchard on Milton Hill, Wells, by the sound in question. I located the bird in the branches of an apple-tree, which it left, and flew to an oak in an adjoining field. Here exactly the same sound was produced, but the bird left the tree again as soon as I got within a few yards, and flew to an elm growing in a hedge bordering the roadway, on the other side of which is a plantation known as the Coombe. I went down into the road, and watched the bird several minutes before it flew away; here the same sound was produced as from the apple- and oak-trees. I also noticed that whilst it shifted restlessly about the very small branches at the top of the tree the noise did not vary, resembling somewhat in miniature the sound uttered by the Nightjar, or drawing a stick with great rapidity along iron railings. I am inclined to believe the sound is uttered from the bird's throat, and used as a call- or mating-note during nesting-time. I have never to my
