BOHEMIAN WAXWING. 357 



The Bohemian Waxwing is one of the most beautiful 

 of the birds that visit this country, combining as it does a 

 graceful form with a plumage of brilliant and varied colours. 

 It is, however, only a winter visiter, and that, too, at most 

 uncertain intervals ; yet coming, as it then docs, in flocks, 

 and attracting attention by its gay appearance, as well as its 

 numbers, it can hardly be called a very rare bird, as there is 

 scarcely a northern county in which it has not been frequent- 

 ly killed, and few collections of birds of any extent exist 

 which do not include one or more specimens. 



Like most of the winter visiters to this country, the Wax- 

 wings come to us from the north, and have been seen in 

 small troops or families of eight or ten in number, occasion- 

 ally in flocks consisting of some scores, and sometimes even 

 of several hundreds. These are distributed over the country 

 as they proceed southward, and a few reach the counties on 

 our southern coast. Specimens have been killed in Kent, 

 Surrey, and Sussex. The bird from Avhich the figure was 

 taken in the Synopsis of British Birds, by John Walcott, 

 Esq. was killed in Hampshire. Dr. Edward Moore says 

 that several have been shot in the plantations of Mount 

 Edgecumbe, and Saltram in Devonshire ; and Mr. Couch, in 

 a Catalogue of Cornish Birds with which he has favoured me, 

 mentions one instance of this bird being killed at Lest- 

 withiel in 1829, and another near Helston in 1835 ; but 

 examples so far south are much more rare than in the 

 northern counties. Mr. Thomas Eyton notices several spe- 

 cimens that have been killed in Shropshire ; and Mr. W. 

 Thompson mentions various instances of the occurrence of 

 this bird in Ireland. In the northern counties of England, 

 and in Scotland, as before observed, the appearance of these 

 birds, though accidental, is much more frequent, and the 

 winters of 1787-88 and 9, 1790 and 91, 1803, 1810, 1820, 

 22, 28, 1830, 31, 34 and 35, are particularly recorded as 



