A BLUE-TAILED BEE-EATER IN DORSET. [To THE EDITOR Or THE
"SPECTATOR."] • is so seldom that one hears of a rare bird being taken in our island and allowed to go free, that your readers may be glad to hear evidence of a better spirit of love for things beautiful that have life which is slowly making itself felt, —as against the old unthoughtful habit of killing and stuffing every rare corner that hand or gun or trap could lay hold of. Mrs. Butt, of "The Salterns," Parkstone, on the coast between Bournemouth and Poole, was going upstairs to her nursery one morning last September and caught a blue-tailed bee- eater (Philippinus). The beautiful little foreigner had been attracted by a large bee's-nest in the roof above the nursery. Mrs. Butt kept it in captivity for half an hour in order that by consulting her various books of birds she might identify it. Then she gave it food and water, and believing that, as her grounds were densely wooded and far from the road, the little creature might escape the collector's gun, she let it fly. It is, I think, the second recorded instance in the century of the visit of this rare bird to our shore. A former example was caught a hundred years ago in the same neighbourhood.— I am, Sir, &c.,
H. D. RAWN8LEY.
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