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ROCK AND RIVER OUSELS. 



ALTHOUGH the rock-ousel, as his name imports, is fond of 

 rocks and precipices, and commonly builds among them, yet a 

 pair may often be met with haunting ferny brakes with only 

 a few scattered stones, upon which they delight to perch. 

 When disturbed, they fly from stone to stone, uttering a very 

 grating chirp, which seems to be a note of defiance. One 

 summer (1842) a good number of them came down from the 

 hills to the garden at Lennie, and did' much damage to the 

 fruit, especially the currants. The gardener shot several, 

 which he brought to me. The ring of the males was very 

 dusky, and in some there were brown feathers interspersed. 

 The females had no white ring at all. They were timid birds 

 much more so than the thrushes and blackbirds, their fellow- 

 depredators and it required some caution to get a shot at 

 them. 



A nest was found in the spring, near the foot of a thick 

 bush, on the bank of a rocky brook. They reared their young 

 ones undisturbed. I think it not unlikely that the greater 

 number of those that frequented the garden in summer were 

 birds of that year, although the crescent of one shot by the 

 gardener, evidently an old male, was far less pure than in 

 spring, and certainly not so fully pronounced. A pair had 

 their nest on the crags of Arthur's Seat, a few summers ago, 

 and I often watched them with interest. The crescent in both, 



