May came in with a bitter east wind. On the 1st the Sedge Warbler was heard and seen, and the 2nd brought Swallows, "not single spies, but in battalions." On this day I observed a flock of about fifty Knots on the foreshore, and could perceive no sign of any change of dress from the ordinary sober gray of winter. The House Martin came on the 6lh, and on the 8th I saw a very considerable flock of Fieldfares; wind E.N.E. and very cold. The only Lesser Whitethroat seen by me this season was, on the 12th, actively engaged searching for food on the branch of a pear tree trained on the side of the house. I watched the little fellow for some minutes at the distance of only a few feet. On the 14lh—wind north, dull and cold— the Spotted Flycatcher and Swift were seen. The Garden Warblers were unusually late, none being heard here before the 17th.
On May 26th I saw a pair of Turtle Doves perched together on a tree by the roadside near Riby, Colonel Tomline's Lincolnshire seat, a locality where they now regularly nest. On the 29lh a Hock of fifteen Turnstones were foraging amongst the bladder-wrack on the Humber embankment. Whimbrel never visited us in less numbers, and a small flock of eight were all I saw during the month.
The nest of a Sedge Warbler on June 2nd contained two eggs. The Reed Warblers, however, which I first found nesting in our north-east marsh district in 1870, only returned to their nesting haunts on the 14th June, at which time the autumn-mown reeds in the drains were sufficiently advanced to enable them to commence building.
I have commenced these notes with an extract from a letter of Mr. Gätke's. I will conclude them in the same manner. On June 5th he writes, "Two days ago an Emberiza melanocephala, a male of last autumn changing for summer dress without moult, was killed here, and is a very interesting catch."
