MR SELBY ON BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 71 



ments in the angle of almost every window of the house, and beneath 

 the eaves of the stables and other out-houses. Its desertion I also attri- 

 bute to the change produced by the growth of the large body of planta- 

 tion around the house, for open districts are the favourite resort of this 

 species, as is shewn by the multitudes which select, as breeding places, 

 the eaves and windows of houses in open exposed districts, the rocky 

 precipices of th(f sea-coast, as about St Abb's Head, or those of the in- 

 terior, as I observed to be the case in Sutherland, where the lime- 

 stone or marble cliffs near Inch-na-Damff are annually visited by large 

 colonies of martlets. 



To the whin-chat, Scusicola rubetray which is annually becoming 

 less frequent in this neighbourhood, I may add the sedge-warbler. Locus- 

 tella phragmitis, the white-throat, Sylvia cinerca, and the cuckoo, Cucu- 

 lus canorus. The gradual desertion of this species, I think may chiefly 

 be attributed to the great change that has taken place in the features of 

 this northern district within the last twenty or thirty years, in conse- 

 quence of the improved system of agriculture that has been pursued, and 

 under which the draining and reclaiming of marshy and waste pieces of 

 ground has been so generally effected. Many of our members can no 

 doubt recollect when bogs of greater or less extent, and pieces of ground 

 covered with natural herbage and low brushwood, were to be seen in al- 

 most every direction, I might say in almost every field ; these, however, 

 have now vanished under the spirit of improvement, and their loss, 

 though no doubt considered a gain by the agriculturist, is, I believe, not 

 unfrequently regretted by the botanist and the ornithologist, as it was 

 in these favoured spots that the one was wont to pull the rarest gifts of 

 Flora, and the other to listen to the various notes, or watch the habits 

 of some of the most interesting of our feathered visitants. 



An inspection of the table will shew that a considerable difference 

 takes place in the period of arrival of the various species, in different 

 years ; this, however, may always be traced to the advanced or retarded 

 state of the season, as the migratory flight seems in a great measure re- 

 gulated by the state of vegetation ; thus I have observed that the arrival 

 of the willow-wren and blackcap may be expected with the first southerly 

 wind, as soon as the larch becomes visibly green, and that of the wood- 

 wren with the first bursting of the buds of the oak and beech. In some 

 seasons the arrival of the earlier visitants is found to be at the usual or 

 average period, whilst that of the later comers is postponed considerably 

 beyond it ; this always happens when the spring has been favourable to 

 the first, but has been succeeded by cold and ungenial weather about 

 the time the flight of the latter should have taken place. 



