. British birds. Birds. OTES. STAINED EGGS OF THE GREAT TIT. I HAVE received from the Rev. N. W. Paine an egg of a Great Tit (Panis m. newtoni), stained black all over. Mr. Paine informs me that the nest, found at Great Melton Rectory, Norfolk, was built in a cup-shaped fork of a tree open to the sky. There were eight eggs in it and these were all coated with some black substance like the one he forwarded to me. The nest was very liable to be flooded owing to its position, and later, after heavy rain, the remaining eggs were Avashed almost clean. The bird subsequently deserted. J. H. GURNEY. I
. British birds. Birds. OTES. STAINED EGGS OF THE GREAT TIT. I HAVE received from the Rev. N. W. Paine an egg of a Great Tit (Panis m. newtoni), stained black all over. Mr. Paine informs me that the nest, found at Great Melton Rectory, Norfolk, was built in a cup-shaped fork of a tree open to the sky. There were eight eggs in it and these were all coated with some black substance like the one he forwarded to me. The nest was very liable to be flooded owing to its position, and later, after heavy rain, the remaining eggs were Avashed almost clean. The bird subsequently deserted. J. H. GURNEY. I have examined microscopically the substance coating one of these eggs and have little doubt that it is foecal matter. It covers the egg imiformly, being nowhere thicker in one place than in another, is of a brownish-black colour and of the consistency of tar. Dissection of the parent bird might have shown some structural abnormality in the oviduct or cloaca and possibly explained the occurrence. M. D. Hill. PIED FLYCATCHER IN SOMERSET. ^ On April 2'ith, 1916,1 saw a male Pied Flycatcher {Muscicajm h. hypoleuca) near Porlock, Somerset. I passed the same spot later in the day and again on the 25th and 28th, but did not see it, so the bird was probably a passing migrant. The Pied Flycatcher is rare in Somerset. C. Smith {Birds of Somerset, 1869) mentions one bird '' apparently a male " near Taunton " some years ; In some privately published notes of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, covering the period 1865 to 1913, by James Turner, two males in April, 1891, at Bagworth, near Axbridge, and one male in the third week of April, 1901, near Milverton, are recorded. In the same notes it is stated that the bird has bred in Devon within one mile of the Somerset countj^ boundary. E. W. Hendy. [Migrants are recorded from Somersetshire in April or May, 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1913, in the Migration Reports, so that the bird is probably a f
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