244 BRITISH BIRDS. 
the Petchora, we may almost assume that rocks are indispensable to the 
Ring-Ouzel. It appears again more to the east amongst the rocks of the 
Ural Mountains; but its further range eastwards appears to be barred by 
the rockless steppes of West Siberia. When the Redwing and the Field- 
fare are on the point of departure from our shores for their northern 
breeding-haunts, the Ring-Ouzel’s bold and defiant cries are first heard, 
and his song, carried hither and thither over the moorlands by the breeze, 
sounds wild and sweet as, tempered by distance, it greets our ear as the 
bird sits wary and watchful on the highest pinnacle of some projecting 
rock. Impelled by resistless impulse, this handsome Ouzel has again 
sought the solitudes of the moors for the purpose of rearing its young, 
arriving towards the end of March or early in April. 
The Ring-Ouzel is a somewhat remarkable bird; for although not the 
only migratory British Thrush, still it is the only Thrush that visits our 
country for the purpose of rearing its young ; and, in addition to this, it is 
the only Thrush that principally confines itself to the upland wilds. A true 
bird of the wilderness, it prefers the deepest solitudes that our land affords. 
Truly, indeed, the Ring-Ouzel’s home is a wild and romantic one. You will 
first make his acquaintance where the heath begins, where the silver birch 
trees are scattered amongst the rock-fragments, and the gorse bushes and 
stunted thorns and bracken are the last signs of more lowland vegetation. 
The scenery gets wilder, but still the bird is your companion; he flits 
from rock to rock before you, or, by making long detours, returns to the 
place whence you flushed him, uttering his loud, harsh, and discordant 
call-notes. The hills of Derbyshire are one of his favourite haunts: 
almost on the very summit of Kinder Scout, the highest peak of the High 
Peak, nearly two thousand feet above the sea-level, the Ring-Ouzels rear 
their young. The plateau on the summit of this wild mountain, the view 
from which is one of the finest in the north of England, is intersected by 
deep watercourses, the principal ones worn down to the solid rock, but 
the greater part of them mere trenches in the peat alone, too wide to jump 
across, and destitute of the least trace of vegetation. The innumerable 
islands which lie in this network of “ groughs,” as they are locally called, 
are covered with heath, bilberry, crowberry, clusterberry, and, in some 
places, with cranberry, bearberry, and cloudberry. The latter plant is the 
great feature of the wild Siberian tundras, the “ maroshka” of the Russians, 
and the “ molteberre” of the Norwegians. But the botanist is not the 
only one who finds an interest here. Bird-life is on every side; and the 
handsome “Torr-Ouzel,” as the peasant lads and herdsmen call him, lives 
im company with the Red Grouse, the Curlew, the Peewit, and the Golden 
Plover, which also breed in this wild upland solitude. 
The Ring-Ouzel is a shy and wary bird, rarely allowing the observer 
to approach it within gunshot, except when its nest is in danger, The 
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