258 SYLVIAD.E. 



The season for catching is concluded about tlie end of the 

 third week in September, after which very few birds are ob- 

 served to pass. Stragglers are occasionally seen later in the 

 year. Mr. Sweet " observed a pair on the 17th of Novem- 

 ber 1822, near the gravel-pit in Hyde Park, which were 

 quite lively, and flying about after insects as brisk as if it 

 had been the middle of summer." 



The diffusion of the Wheatear during summer over Eng- 

 land, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland is general ; it visits also 

 the Hebrides, and the islands of Orkney and Shetland. It 

 arrives in Denmark and Sweden about the middle of April ; 

 Mr. Hewitson saw numbers in Norway ; and Linneus ob- 

 served it in Lapland. The extreme northern range of this 

 apparently delicate bird is very extensive. It visits the 

 Faroe Islands and Iceland. Captain Sabine, in his Memoir 

 on the Birds of Greenland, says, " This species was not seen 

 on the shores of Greenland, on which we landed ; but on our 

 return homewards in October 1818, off Cape Farewell, a few 

 were seen at a distance from the land, doubtless on their 

 passage southward. In our outward voyage, in May, we also 

 met with them in latitude 60° N. and longitude 18° W., 

 then most probably migrating northward."" In high lati- 

 tudes, this little bird does not breed till June ; and it has 

 been seen on the shores of Greenland by Fabricius and 

 others. Captain James Ross, in the Natural History ap- 

 pended to the narrative of the last Voyage to the Arctic 

 Regions, says of the Wheatear, *' One of these little birds 

 was observed flying round the ship in Felix Harbour, 70° N. 

 91° 53' W., on the 2nd of May 1830, and was found dead 

 alongside the next morning: having arrived before the ground 

 was sufficiently uncovered to enable it to procure its food, it 

 had perished from want. It is the only instance of this bird 

 having been met with in Arctic America, in the course of our 

 several expeditions to those regions." 



