OUSEL 667 



young of both sexes resemble the mother. The Blackbird is found 

 in every country of Europe, even breeding — though rarely — beyond 

 the arctic circle, and in eastern Asia, as well as in Barbary and the 

 Atlantic islands. Eesident in Britain as a species, its numbers yet 

 receive considerable accession of passing visitors in autumn, and in 

 most parts of its range it is very migratory. The song of the cock 

 has a peculiarly liquid tone, which makes it much admired, but it 

 is too discontinuous to rank the bird very high as a musician. The 

 species is very prolific, having sometimes as many as four broods in 

 the course of the spring and summer. The nest, generally placed 

 in a thick bush, is made of coarse roots or grass, strongly put 

 together with earth, and is lined with fine grass. Herein are laid 

 from four to six eggs of a light greenish-blue closely mottled with 

 reddish-brown. Generally vermivorous, the Blackbird will, when 

 pressed for food, eat grains and seeds, while berries and fruits in 

 their season are eagerly sought by it, thus earning the enmity of 

 gardeners. More or less allied to and resembling the Blackbird are 

 many other species which inhabit most parts of the world, except- 

 ing the Ethiopian Region, New Zealand and Australia proper, and 

 North America. Some of them have the legs as well as the bill 

 yellow or orange ; and, in a few of them, both sexes alike display a 

 uniformly glossy black. The only one that need here be particu- 

 larized is the Ring-Ousel, Turdus torquatus, which is at once dis- 

 tinguishable from the Blackbird by its conspicuous white gorget — 

 whence its name. It has also very different habits, frequenting 

 wild and open tracts of country, shunning woods, groves and planta- 

 tions, and preferring the shelter of rocks to that of trees. Its dis- 

 tribution is accordingly much more local, and in most parts of 

 England it is only known as a transitory migrant in spring and 

 autumn — from and to its hardly as yet ascertained winter 

 quarters.^ 



The Water-Ousel, or Water-Crow — now commonly named the 

 "Dipper" — is the Cindus aquaticus of most ornithologists, and the 

 type of a small but remarkable group of birds, the position of 

 which many taxonomers have been at their wits' end to determine. 

 It would be useless here to recount the various suppositions that 

 have been expressed ; suffice it to say that most ornithologists are 

 now agreed in regarding the genus Cindus ^ as differing so much 



^ The Ring-Ousel of central and southern Europe presents several differences, 

 having most of its feathers edged with white, and is regarded by some authorities 

 (Stejneger, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1886, pp. 36.5-372 ; Salvadori, Boll. Mus. Zool. 

 Torino, viii. No. 152) as a distinct species, T. al2)estris (Brehm) ; but Mr. 

 Seebohm says {Ibis, 1888, pp. 310, 311) that intermediate forms occur, and that 

 further to the eastward, as in Caucasia and Persia, examples shew a still greater 

 divergence, forming a local race to which he applies the name orientalis. 



2 Some writers have used for this genus the name Hydrohata. 



