RING OUZEL. 207 



The Ring Ouzel is a summer visitor to the British 

 Islands ; and although its migrations are decidedly opposite 

 as to season to those of the Fieldfare and Redwing, which 

 visit us in winter, all three pass the coldest weather in the 

 warmer parts of Europe, and the countries a little farther 

 to the south of it, and all three likewise pass the summer in 

 the more central or northern parts. 



The Ring Ouzel arrives in this country from the south in 

 the month of April, and appears to prefer the extreme western 

 and northern portions of these islands, visiting the wilder 

 rocky and mountainous districts generally. They breed, it 

 is said, on Dartmoor every year ; and Mr. Eyton has no- 

 ticed that they are by no means rare birds in Wales, parti- 

 cularly on the Berwyn chain of mountains near Corwen. 

 According to Mr. Thompson,* they are distributed generally 

 over Ireland ; and the birds are seen every spring in Devon- 

 shire and Cornwall, on their passage, probably, to these 

 breeding-grounds. 



They are seen in Surrey, Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Nor- 

 folk, both in spring and autumn ; and from the circumstance 

 of a specimen having been shot early in the month of Au- 

 gust ]836 near Saffron Walden, it was conjectured the bird 

 had been bred in that neighbourhood. In 1804, a pair 

 built in a garden at LowestofF ; but their nests are much 

 more frequent in the northern counties. Mr. Allis of York 

 tells me that it breeds in the higher moorlands of Yorkshire : 

 and the eggs of this bird in my own collection were sent me 

 by Mr. Leyland of Halifax. They are known to breed also 

 in Derbyshire. Mr. Selby, in his Catalogue of Birds of the 

 county of Northumberland, says it is common in summer 

 throughout the Cheviot range, and the higher parts of Cum- 

 berland and Durham. At the meeting of the Berwick Na- 

 turalists' Club in September 1834, Mr. Armstrong men- 



* Mag. of Zool. and Dot. vol. ii. p. 438. 



