Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/233

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ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM MID-WALES.
201

note of this bird at Love's Grove; but so scarce is it as a breeding species in Western Wales that, though always on the look-out for the past six years, I had never met with it previously. The Wood Lark sang on Sept. 30th.

On Oct. 2nd I called to see a Kite in the hands of the local birdstuffer. It was said to be an old male, and was, I am afraid, a member of the small and dwindling colony above mentioned. A Kestrel got up hurriedly from the cliff on Oct. 22nd, dropping a half-eaten Thrush as it rose. I have long thought that the Kestrel's misdeeds in this direction are more numerous than is generally supposed. A pair of Choughs, long absent from this immediate neighbourhood, frequented the hill at the northern end of Aberystwyth all through the autumn, apparently for the sake of hunting for beetles amongst the slates and debris due to the making of a tramway.