52 Among the Birds in Northern Shires. 



quickly. In Devonshire we note its arrival towards 

 the end of March, and yet by the first half-dozen 

 days of April it has penetrated even as far as the 

 Orkneys and the Hebrides! Passing- mention should 

 here also be made of the Sky-lark and the Stone- 

 chat — neither bird strictly a moorland one, yet both 

 found in the locality. The Stonechat, we remember, 

 used to be, and may be now, fairly common on the 

 rough broken ground, not exactly true moorland, in 

 the valley of the Rivelin at Hollow Meadows, half a 

 dozen miles west of Sheffield. 



Our last moorland Passere is the Ring-ouzel, a 

 prime favourite with us, and a species with which 

 we have been exceptionally familiar from boyhood's 

 days. This bird always impressed us to a remark- 

 able degree, possibly because it is such a bold and 

 assertive one. With a lifelong experience of this 

 handsome Ouzel — he is known to the country people 

 in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire as the 

 " Tor Ouzel ", i.e. Mountain Ouzel^ — we should un- 

 hesitatingly state that it is commonest in the district 

 of the Peak. He breeds upon the Cornish uplands, 

 and in Devonshire upon Dartmoor, as we have re- 

 peatedly remarked; then we find him on the uplands 

 of Somerset, and increasingly common over the 

 Welsh mountains northwards to the vast solitudes 

 of the Pennine chain. Farther north in Scotland he 

 is found, but our experience is that the bird is local, 



