12 BRITISH BIRDS. 



visits the south of France, where Mr. St. Quintin sa^v about 

 a dozen, and it is by no means uncommon in some parts of 

 Italy, thoug-h local. Eastward it ranges from Greece to 

 Turkestan, and in Africa from Tunisia to Abyssinia. 



[In " The Irish Naturalist," 1906, p. 137, my friend, Mr. 

 R. M. Barrington, gives an accomit of the acquisition of 

 an example of the American Snowbird, Junco hiemalis, at 

 Loop Head lighthouse, co. Clare, on May 30th, 1905. The 

 specimen was seen by many at the Fourth International 

 Ornithological Congress, and greatly interested some of 

 our American visitors. There seems to be an inclination 

 to infer that because Greenland Redpolls have found their 

 way to Ireland without being suspected of " assisted 

 passages," this species may have done likewise. I would 

 therefore point out that there seems to be no evidence that 

 this Finch was ever found in Greenland ; not even in the 

 south. Herr H. Winge utterly denies its existence there. 

 Gould, in his "Birds of Europe," started the fiction that 

 it was "common in Greenland," byway of improving upon 

 Temminck, who had stated that this species "pushed its 

 migrations to Iceland, where many individuals had been 

 taken." That made it a " bird of Europe," and then the 

 necessary link with America was, naturally, Greenland !] 



XI. — The Citril Finch. 



Chrysomitris citrinella (Linn.). 



In " The Zoologist," 1905, p. 91, Mr. J. H. Gurney 

 recorded the capture, on 29th January, 1904, of " an adult 

 female in good feather," by a Yarmouth bird-catcher. It 

 is rather surprising that this species has not been sooner 

 recognized as an occasional visitor, for it is common — 

 though local in the breeding-season — in Switzerland, 

 Baden, and the mountains and hill-country of Central 

 Germany ; while it has occurred as a wanderer in 

 Heligoland. As there is a tendency to consider the Citril 

 Finch of the Italian Alps and Southern Europe as entitled 



