Notes and Observations 15 Part 3

NOTES A N D OBSERVATIONS T I T INCUBATING ACORNS. A great tit which built last summer in one of my nest boxes incubated six acorns as well as her own four eggs, the acorns being left-overs from a long-tailed field mouse's winter larder.

At another nesting box, occupied by tree sparrows, the birds brought in a dead wren as nesting material.

R. J. COPPING, Stowmarket.

RED SQUIRREL (Sciurus vulgaris) IN N O R T H SUFFOLK. Five were seen dead on the road between Somerleyton and St. Olaves during 1969, but it is still common there, as it is at Herringfleet, where up to three at a time were regularly seen on a bird table. At the same place one got inside an anglers keep-net hanging flat against a wall but was released unhurt.

H . E. JENNER, L o w e s t o f t .

GREY SQUIRREL (Sciurus carolinensis).

Grey squirrels have been reported from Melton, December, 1969.

W . BLOSS.

GREY SQUIRRELS AT ROUGHAM. During a day's vermin shoot in March, on the Rougham Hall estate, 106 grey squirrels were killed.

L T . - C O L . F . V . OBORNE, Great Barton.

KESTREL ' F O L L O W I N G ' PLOUGH. During the autumn of 1 9 6 9 , I was constantly driving a tractor and plough over a wide area, about l f - 2 miles Square, mainly in Great Glemham. On a number of occasions when I was ploughing near a wood and in places widely scattered over the whole area I noticed a kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) sitting on a tree watching the plough going up and down the field.

If a field mouse was ploughed out and ran across the stubble the kestrel swooped down and took it. I have many times seen gulls following closely behind the plough pick up a mouse but never before seen a hawk of any sort do it.

A. HEFFER, Great Glemham.

BLACKBIRD K I L L S BLACKBIRD. Early in March, 1 9 7 0 , a cock blackbird hit an electricity line and feil stunned onto a patch of snow in my garden. I picked it up and set it upright, off the snow, in a warm place under a hedge in the sun: its legs were too weak or too uncontrolled to support it. Within a minute another cock blackbird stood on the injured one's back and pecked the back of

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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 15, Part 3

its head until it was dead. It then left its victim and flew away but returned to pull the body a foot or so onto the lawn: it then stood on it and went on pecking away at the head with rather slow deliberate pecks until I went out to look at the injuries inflicted.

All the feathers and much of the skin had been torn from the top of the skull but the bones of the skull had not been broken. A day or two later a pair of blackbirds started to build a nest in the hedge above the spot where I put the injured bird. It seems probable that I put it in the territory of the aggressor.

CRANBROOK, G t . G l e m h a m .

OWL KILLS OWL. In March, 1 9 7 0 , a male tawny owl (Strix aluco) which had been kept as a pet since it was a chick two years ago, was brought to us at the R.S.P.B. reserve at Minsmere "to be returned to the wild". It was in excellent physical condition. As was to be expected, however, the bird showed no skill in catching live prey and whole dead mice and sparrows had to be given it by hand. The bird was placed in a large aviary built around the trunk of an oak tree in a corner of the wood close to my cottage and in this wire-netting enclosure, whose door was kept wide open, it slept for short periods by day in a small wooden hut.

We do not know if the bird left the aviary at night to forage in the wood.

From the first night it answered the "hoo-hoo" calls of another male tawny owl. On the morning after the fourth night I found the bird locked closely front to front with another tawny owl, in the grass in the aviary. They separated just before I could pick them up and one, darker and evidently a wild bird, flew weakly through the open door to land under a nearby bush. T h e other bird was extremely weak and had been attacked about the head; it did not regain strength and died in the morning of the following day. T h e wild bird, which itself had apparently received injury when attacking the new male which we had unwittingly introduced into its territory, stood motionless all day on the ground under the bush and disappeared during the night.

H. E. AXELL, Minsmere Bird Reserve.

VIPER (Vipera berus).

In June, 1 9 6 9 , a viper was found trying to pull a fully fledged willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) from its nest by the feathers of one wing, but let go and retreated into the undergrowth when disturbed. The bird was not bitten, only held by the wing feathers, and with its nestmates flew from the nest two days later.

H . E . JENNER, L o w e s t o f t .

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

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SUB-FOSSIL SNAILS. When the North Sea gas line was being driven through Stratford St. Andrew the trench was dug about 5 feet below the bottom of an existing ditch on the Stud Farm in the Valley of the Aide (Grid reference T M 352612).

The excavator there turned up some post glacial detrital peat in which were found the following snail shells, kindly identified bv Dr. M. P. Kerney:—

Valvata cristata V. piscinalis Bithynia tentaculata B. leachi Carychium minimum Lymnaea truncatula L. stagnalis Physa fontinalis Planorbis carinatus P- crista Segmentina complanata Acroloxus lacustris

Succinea ? pfeifferi Cochlicopa lubrica Vertigo antivertigo Euconulus fulvus Zonitoides nitidus Helix hortensis Pisidium casertanum P. milium P. subtruncatum P. hibernicum P. nitidum P. pulchellum

Later at Glevering in the Valley of the Deben (Grid reference T M 291575) after the trench had been filled in I saw a small amount of a similar peat on the surface by a similar ditch, in which I identified the following:— Valvata cristata V. piscinalis Bithynia tentaculata B. leachi

Lymnaea stagnalis Planorbis carinatus Acroloxus lacustris Succinea sp.

CRANBROOK, G t . G l e m h a m .

G O L D M E D A L W O O D ( S u f f o l k Natural History, Vol. 15, Part 2 , pp. 145-147, January, 1970). Samuel Kilderbee's method of planting acorns mixed with ash keys and white thorn berries was not original. In Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandry 1583, which was the Standard agricultural text book from then until the end of the 17th Century, the following Instructions appear:—

Sow acorns, ye o w n e r s that t i m b e r do love, Sow h a w and rye w i t h t h e m , t h e better to p r o v e ; If cattle or coney m a y enter t h e crop, Y o u n g oak is in danger, of losing his top.

In my edition, published in 1931, there is the following footnote:— Till t h e place with t h e plow, in m a n n e r of fallowing and Crosse p l o w it and beat t h e clods small as m a y bee. T h e n sett acorns, ashkeyes, hawes, hedgeberries, nuts, w h a t eise you desire, a n d h a r r o w it, and for s o m e two or three yeres it were good to keepe it as free f r o m grasses or weeds as could he. I k n o w a wood sowne of acornes a b o u t two a n d t w e n t y years, t h e Oaks whereof are n o w as high as an o r d i n a r y steeple. ( N o r d e n ) STRADBROKE, H e n h a m .