NEIGHBOURHOOD OF VIENNA. 615 



irregular, and very poor both in numbers and species the 

 Harriers, multitudes of which generally visit the plains of 

 Lower Austria in September, being almost entirely absent, 

 and I noted the first Rough-legged Buzzard on October 20th, 

 that is fourteen days earlier than in previous years ; but from 

 that day did not see another of these birds, which are usually 

 so common, until the end of November, when I remarked three 

 of them flying one evening to their roosting-places in the auen. 



It was interesting to see what multitudes of Fieldfares 

 there were this autumn. On October 30th I saw hundreds 

 on the meadows and clearings of the Wiener Wald some 

 distance above Baden ; and I met with much larger flocks, 

 which must have contained thousands of them, in the auen 

 of the Danube at Orth on October 6th and 7th, while I have 

 since observed them until quite recently both in the Wiener 

 Wald and the plains, but never in such large numbers. 



The appearance of the Nutcrackers and their spread into 

 districts which they usually seldom or never visit was very 

 remarkable. Between September 15t]i and 18th I observed a 

 great many of these birds in the wooded hills of Pohorella and 

 Murany, in the county of Gomor, and at the end of September 

 and the beginning of October I also saw them at various 

 localities in the north of Styria, both high up in the moun- 

 tains and quite low down in the valleys, while in the middle 

 of October I found them very abundant in the woods among 

 the fields and the low-lying copses of the hilly ground in the 

 county of Maros-Torda in Transylvania. At the end of Octo- 

 ber several were observed above Baden ; on the 21st a keeper 

 killed one in the Laxenburg park ; the following day I shot 

 a couple of handsome old birds in the outlying woods of the 

 Wiener Wald near Huttendorf ; and on the morning of No- 

 vember 18th, which was cold and misty, I saw one sitting on 

 an acacia near the railway station in Brack on the Leitha. This 

 was the first time in the course of the past few years that I 



