NEIGHBOURHOOD OF VIENNA. 607 



Bustards ( Otis tarda) are often seen, but not at the same 

 places that they frequent during the summer, for in Lower 

 Austria they are true birds of passage, and do not remain for 

 the autumn and winter where they spent the breeding- 

 season andrlhe summer, but remove to other ground, generally 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of their former quarters. 

 There old and young congregate together in great flocks, and 

 go through the rigours of the winter in company. A few 

 days ago I saw a flock of more than thirty on a field of 

 young corn. 



The Great Black Woodpecker (Picus martins) was often 

 seen in the Laxenburg Park at the end of September and the 

 beginning of October, and the appearance of such a thorough 

 forest-bird in these woods so surrounded by plains certainly 

 seems strange. I was, however, told by the keepers that it is 

 noticed every year, but only for a few days, both in the park 

 and the small clumps of trees and covers which lie round it, 

 and that it may often be observed flying from tree to tree 

 along the willow-fringed brooks, and so passing from one 

 wood to another. This betokens a migration, or, at any 

 rate, a change of residence, at the commencement of the cold 

 weather. 



I will, in conclusion, mention a peculiar duck which I shot 

 a little while ago. As already said, great flocks of Mallards 

 often visited the Laxenburg pond, and one day I noticed, 

 among many others, a particularly large and very dark- 

 plumaged bird. I killed it and found myself in the posses- 

 sion of a most remarkable specimen. The dark green head, 

 blue wing-coverts, little feathers in the tail, and the distribu- 

 tion of light and dark in the plumage were just the same as 

 in the Mallard, but over the whole of it there was a brownish 

 tone, which in some parts, such as the belly, was very dark, 

 while the light feathers had a reddish metallic sort of sheen. 



