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RING-OUSELS. 67 



The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) 

 were some ring-ousels, turdi torquati. 



This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being 

 with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told 

 us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries, some birds 

 like blackbirds, with rings of white round their necks : a neigh- 

 bouring farmer also at the same time observed the same ; but, 

 as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I men- 

 tioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 

 4th, 1767 : (you however paid but small regard to what I said, 

 as I had not seen these birds myself :) but last week the afore- 

 said farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, 

 shot two cocks and two hens : and says, on recollection, that he 

 remembers to have observed these birds again last spring, about 

 Lady-day, as it were, on their return to the north. Now per- 

 haps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, 

 but belong to the more northern parts of Europe ; and may re- 

 tire before the excessive rigour of the frosts in those parts ; and 

 return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates. If this be 

 the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage, con- 

 cerning whose migrations the writers are silent : but if these 

 birds should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here 

 is a migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before 

 remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond 

 the bounds of our island to the south ; but it is most probable 

 that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would 

 have continued so long unnoticed in the southern counties. 

 The ousel is larger than a blackbird, and feeds on haws ; but 

 last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries : 

 in the spring it feeds on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that 

 season, in March and April. 



I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on 

 the study of reptiles) that my people, every now and then of 

 late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is 

 63 feet deep, a large black warty lizard with a fin-tail and yel- 



shed very soon after leaving the nest, and is replaced by another of closer texture and more 

 rufous hue, the upper feathers of which have each one dark bar across, the primaries not being 

 shed till the spring, when the birds assume the adult male and female dress, as described in 

 books, the latter much resembling that of the young, but without the barring. In autumn 

 they of course moult again, at which time 1 believe both sexes assume the plumage last described, 

 and the following spring I suspect that both acquire that which has been hitherto considered 

 exclusively characteristic of the adult male, several fertile females having to my knowledge been 

 killed in this dress, differing in appearance only from the male in being less bright. These 

 changes have escaped the notice of all our naturalists. Ei>. . 



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