THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 267 



have liked to possess some one specimen of these birds whose 

 beauty was exceptional, but I could never find heart to do one an 

 injury after it had so confidingly given me its entertaining com- 

 pany during an hour or so of work in the garden. 



Unfortunately all the song-birds pass Heligoland in silence, and 

 of the Bluethroat, too, the only note we hear is a kind of smack 

 like ' Tack.' This is specially to be deplored hi the case of this 

 bird, for according to Seebohm (Ibis, 1876, and Siberia in Europe), 

 it is not only an excellent songster, nearly coming up to the night- 

 ingale in the sweetness and tunefulness of its song, but it is also 

 capable of mimicking to the highest perfection the call-notes and 

 songs of all its neighbours. 



The most western breeding stations of this Bluethroat in 

 northern Scandinavia extend beyond 70 N. latitude. But on the 

 Fjelds of Gudbrandsdalen and the Dovrefjeld in Norway it breeds 

 numerously as far south as 62 N. in altitudes possessing a climate 

 similar to that of their more northern nesting quarters. From 

 Finmark and the Waranger Fjord its breeding range extends east- 

 wards through the whole of European and Asiatic Russia as far as 

 Kamtschatka, and it is even said to have been met with as far east 

 as Alaska. Among other investigators, Seebohm met with this 

 species in extremely large numbers on the Lower Petchora and 

 Lower Jenesei. Von Middendorff met with it in north-eastern 

 Asia, and Nordenskjold, during his memorable 'Vega' expedition, 

 in the tracts bordering the Arctic Sea. In these high latitudes 

 the Bluethroat and Eversmann's Warbler, Sylvia borealis, are the 

 only members of the Sylvia family whose song enlivens the icy 

 solitudes of this Land of the Midnight Sun. 



In England the Red-spotted Bluethroat has, according to 

 Newton, been observed only seven times between the years 1826 and 

 1872. This extremely rare occurrence of the bird on the other 

 side of the North Sea proves how rigidly the line of its migratory 

 flight runs in a direction from north to south, and that its most 

 western limit does not reach beyond the meridian of Heligoland. 



The individuals of this species which nest in northern Europe 

 for the most part winter in Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia. In 

 western Africa it probably occurs only in very rare instances, 

 although Carstensen (Naumannia, 1852) notes it among the birds 

 collected in northern Fez under Pallas' name, Sylvia ccerulecula. 



A noteworthy feature in connection with this Bluethroat is dis- 

 played very frequently in the aberrations of the breeding plumage 

 of old males. In normally marked individuals, the throat, fore- 

 neck, and upper breast are of a beautiful ultramarine blue, 

 terminated by a deep black band, itself edged by a fine white 



