Mkcellaneous, 461 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



On Phoenicura Tithys. By Dr. Jordan. 



This bird may be regarded as a regular winter visitor to the south 

 coast of Devon, and though local in its distribution, as indeed is also 

 its more frequent congener, in its own peculiar haunts it may be met 

 with every year. Our first acquaintance with it began in 1 844 ; we 

 then shot two specimens, a male on January 4th, and a female on 

 the 10th of the same month ; they are apt to keep in pairs during 

 the time of their sojourn with us, a male and female usually fre- 

 quenting the same spot. For some winters after this, circumstances 

 prevented our searching for the birds ; nor did we think the visit was 

 other than an accidental occurrence, especially as the season had 

 been unusually mild, and one of my brothers was fortunate enough 

 to shoot an Accentor Alpinus on the cliffs near the same spot upon 

 the 9th of January in the same year. But in 1851 we met with our 

 old friends again, and a splendid male was killed by us on the 30th 

 of January, and a female on the 21st of February. *We again shot a 

 male bird on the 3rd of January 1852, a female on the 27th of 

 December in the ensuing winter, and another, also a female, on the 

 26th of December 1853. Its time for remaining with us seems very 

 short, indeed usually to be limited to three months, December, 

 January and February ; yet during the late winter one was killed 

 early in November, and my brother shot a female as late as the 

 23rd of March : this may perhaps be owing to the long duration of 

 the cold weather, or, which is less probable, we may have over- 

 looked its stay in other years. With the single exception of the last- 

 mentioned bird, all our specimens were shot within fifty yards of the 

 same place, — a sheltered cove by the Parson and Clerk rocks ; but 

 others have met with it along the whole line of coast from Daw- 

 lish to Torquay and Paignton, and as it has occurred at Plymouth, 

 and if my memory does not fail me, at Penzance, and also in the Isle 

 of Wight, the probability is that it might be met with every winter 

 along the whole south-western coast of England. Many are killed 

 every year in the neighbourhood of Teignmouth and Torquay ; one 

 was shot on the telegraph wires by the side of the river Teign ; but it 

 is usually a coast bird and haunts the cliffs. The female procured on 

 the 23rd of March was killed on some trunks of trees laid upon the 

 beach near the town, — a situation much resembling one in which I 

 often remember seeing them in the summer months at Coblenz, 

 where they were frequently to be found settled on some timber by the 

 banks of the Rhine ; they were there abundant, and very tame and 

 domestic in their habits, often perching on the low slate roof of a 

 tvashhouse in the garden of the Hotel de Belle-Vue. 



This last specimen was shot during a snow-storm ; this also is an 

 exception to its usual habits, for it rarely exposes itself during incle- 

 ment or severe weather, and we have seldom seen it, except when the 



