PRELIMINARY CLASSIFIED NOTES 323 



running forwards over the lores, which are black ; the ear coverts are dark brown ; 

 from the gape backwards to the sides of the neck runs a band of buff colour in 

 some individuals nearly white terminating in a patch of deep buff, occasionally 

 even rust-red, behind the ear coverts. The throat is white, more or less striated 

 with black, and bounded on each side by a broad band of blackish brown, running 

 below the white or buff area just described. The pectoral region has a tinge of buff, 

 the rest of the under parts are white, with the exception of the rust-coloured flanks 

 and axillaries. The major coverts are tipped with white, and so also very fre- 

 quently are the innermost secondaries. The striations on the breast also vary 

 very much, being very blurred in some, sharply defined in other individuals. This 

 may prove to be a sexual character. The secondaries and tail feathers are of a 

 darker hue than the back, and the secondaries have pale margins. Juvenile 

 plumage : distinguished at once by the rust-coloured patch on the flanks, the 

 buff superciliary stripe surmounted by an acuate bar of black, and the black spots 

 and buff shaft-streaks of the back. The general hue of the upper parts is a dark 

 brown, relieved on the head by a broad buff superciliary stripe, and a shorter, 

 more arched band of black enclosing a space immediately above. This band 

 apparently answers to the inner supra-ocular band of down-tufts in the early 

 nestling stage. The scapular and interscapular feathers have a broad bar of black 

 across the tip, and narrow shaft-streaks of buff. The interscapular region has 

 the appearance of being streaked with buff and spotted with black. The buff 

 shaft-streaks of the median coverts are wedge-shaped ; the three innermost major 

 coverts are similarly marked. The fore-part of the breast is buff-yellow relieved 

 by round and oval black spots, the former in the breast, the latter in the fore-breast. 

 Flanks, anteriorly, of a buff-yellow, passing backwards into rust colour, and thence, 

 posteriorly, into dull white, the whole area being spotted more or less conspicuously 

 with black. In the spots on the flanks and breast the young differ conspicuously 

 from the adult. The black bar above the eye, and the buff shaft-streaks are 

 similarly wanting in the adult, [w. P. P.] 



2. Distribution. In the breeding season this species inhabits Iceland, the 

 Faeroes, Northern Scandinavia, and North Russia south to East Prussia and North 

 Poland ; also Siberia as far as the river Lena. [F. c. R. J.] 



3. Migration. Apart from occasional possible exceptions, the redwing is a 

 winter visitor and a bird of passage to the British Isles. The autumn immigration 

 from Northern Europe is chiefly on our eastern seaboard from a north-easterly 

 direction, but there seems to be a westerly migration also, to the south-east of 



