A crossbill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this neighbourhood.
Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull’s head or miller’s thumb (gobius fluviatilis capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the lampern (lampœtra parva et fluviatilis), and the stickleback (pisciculus aculeatus).
We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great river, and therefore see but little of sea birds. As to wild fowls, we have a few teems of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in the forest.
Having some acquaintance with the tame brown owl, I find that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.
The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant supply of fresh mice; whereas the young of the brown owl will eat indiscriminately
all that is brought: snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I observed was about the 21st August; it was a straggler.
Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristati, still appear; but I have seen no black-caps lately.
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 20th November.
At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio murinus and the vespertilio auribus.