218 Migration of a Species of Thrush, 



name it bears ; we have undoubted facts to prove that it is 

 far beyond the reach of Audubon. 



" Magna petis Phaethon, et quae nee viribus istis, 

 Munera conveniant." 



You gaze too high ; the prize you seek 

 Cannot be found by sight so weak. 



Charles Waterton. 

 Walton Hall, Feb. 20. 1833. 



Art. VI. On the Migration of a Species of Thrush. By W. L. 

 of Selkirkshire. 



" And thou, mellow mavis, that hail'st the night-fa'." Burns. 



For these many years I have been forced to conclude 

 that we have an additional species of thrush not generally 

 noticed by naturalists. Being in the Island of Harris, some- 

 what more than twenty years ago, in the early part of June, 

 I was greatly surprised to hear the heathy and rocky shores 

 every where resounding with the unintermitting notes of, I 

 may say, thousands of thrushes. It was impossible to take 

 for granted that these "were all the same" as our own south- 

 country mavises that sung in our hawthorn and hazel banks ; 

 yet the song was much like, if it was not more mellow. 



Mr. M'Gillivray has not long since made the same observa- 

 tion, and, moreover, almost ascertained that they subsisted 

 upon whelks and small shell-fish, of which I have no doubt. 

 Some years after my seeing these in the Lewis, I observed a 

 pair, as I thought, of the same kind of thrush, on the top of 

 Braidhills, near Edinburgh. They seemed to have their 

 nestamong some whin bushes, and the cock sung with greatglee, 

 sitting upon the top of one of them. As I was well aware 

 that the thrushes in Lewis and Harris, and thereabouts, 

 came all away in winter, notwithstanding the mildness of the 

 climate, I made no doubt that those I saw on Braidhills, 

 were a pair that had somehow fallen behind, in the great 

 spring migration. 



Four years ago, coming down the Yarrow one morning in 

 the month of April, I was much interested, as I rode along, to 

 see every grass field within my observation from the road, in 

 a manner occupied with thrushes. It was curious to observe 

 that, like sheep grazing, there were seldom two of them 

 together, although there might, perhaps, be at the rate of 

 fifty or more in every ten-acre field. As a thrush, like 

 a tiger, is a predaceous creature, of course they look for their 



