504 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



south Russia, Persia, and Turkestan, wandering southward in winter into Africa. It 

 is a very shy and skulking bird, and may therefore easily be overlooked. 



Our last picture of sylviine species represents birds of which allied species also 

 occur in this country. The upper figure is a Siberian willow-warbler, related to 

 Phyllopseustes borealis, a comparatively recent immigrant into Alaska, where a small 

 breeding colony has settled, the members of which in fall migrate southward through 

 eastern Asia. In general aspect the willow-warblers resemble the kinglets (RegulinoB), 

 which are easily distinguished by their yellow and red nearly tyrannine crown- 

 patches, and by having booted tarsi. Their exact position is still a matter of some 



FiG.28.P/iyllopseui>teii supvrcUionuf;, yellow-browed willow-warbler (upper figure); Jtvijulus ignicnpillus, tire- 

 , crest ; Ji. regulus, gold-crest. 



uncertainty, and many authors refer them to the tits. The lower figure to the left is 

 the European fire-crest (Regulus ignicapillus), in a cut indistinguishable from our 

 North American R. satrapa. The gold-crest (K. regnlus) is the other European species. 

 It was evidently a step towards a natural arrangement when lately the dippers 

 and the mocking-birds were removed from the thrushes and associated more or less 

 intimately with the wrens; and probably the Chamcea should not be kept outside of 

 this assemblage. I may also remark here, as we have just finished the Sylviidoe with- 

 out mentioning the North American Polioptilina?, that I regard the latter as closely 

 allied to the mocking-birds, and that I consequently refer them to the family Mimidae. 

 It seems advisable for the present to retain the conventional family names. 



