BOHEMIAN WAXWING. 389 



THE BOHEMIAN WAXWING is one of the most beautiful 

 of the birds that visit this country, combining as it does a 

 graceful form with a plumage of brilliant and varied colours. 

 It is, however, only a winter visitor, and that, too, at most 

 uncertain intervals ; yet coming, as it then does, in flocks, 

 and attracting attention by its gay appearance, as well as 

 its numbers, it can hardly be called a very rare bird, 

 as there is scarcely a northern county in which it has 

 not been frequently killed, and few collections of birds of 

 any extent exist which do not include one or more 

 specimens. 



Like most of the winter visitors to this country, the 

 Waxwings come to us from the north, and have been seen 

 in small troops or families of eight or ten in number, 

 occasionally in flocks consisting of some scores, and some- 

 times even of several hundreds. These are distributed 

 over the country as they proceed southward, and a few 

 reach the counties on our southern coast. Specimens have 

 been killed in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. The bird from 

 which the figure was taken in the Synopsis of British Birds, 

 by John Walcott, Esq., was killed in Hampshire. Dr. 

 Edward Moore says that several have been shot in the 

 plantations of Mount Edgecumbe, and Saltram in Devon- 

 shire ; and Mr. Couch, in a Catalogue of Cornish Birds 

 with which he has favoured me, mentions one instance of 

 this bird being killed at Lostwithiel in 1829, and another 

 near Helston in 1835 ; but examples so far south are 

 much more rare than in the northern counties. Mr. Thomas 

 Eyton notices several specimens that have been killed in 

 Shropshire ; and Mr. W. Thompson mentions various 

 instances of the occurrence of this bird in Ireland. In the 

 northern counties of England, and in Scotland, as before 

 observed, the appearance of these birds, though accidental, 



