2038 
ON THE RING OUZEL WINTERING IN ENGLAND. 
By tHe Epiror. 
THE observation of the Rey. Isaac Harding, in the last 
number of ‘The Zoologist’ (p. 174), to the effect that a pair of 
Ring Ouzels nested in the Malvern Hills last summer, and 
remained there with their young all the winter, is noteworthy, 
inasmuch as this bird is generally regarded as a summer visitor 
to the British Islands, arriving in April and departing in 
September or October. Professor Newton, in his edition of 
Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds’ (vol. i., p. 287), thus characterising it, 
adds: —‘‘ White, of Selborne, who took an especial interest in 
the appearance of this bird, mentions (Letter xxxviil. to Pennant) 
that some were seen in the Forest of Bere, on the borders of 
Hampshire, at Christmas, 1770, a season which had been marked 
by almost incessant rain from the middle of October; but the 
occurrence of the Ring Ouzel in winter seems otherwise un- 
known in Great Britain, for the information received by Pennant 
as to its residing in Scotland all the year round is plainly 
erroneous.” 
As I happen to have made a few notes on the occurrence of 
the Ring Ouzel in England during winter, the present seems a 
fitting opportunity for reviewing them. ‘To begin with the oldest 
observation in point of date. Since the appearance of the part 
of the new edition of Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds’ which contains the 
passage above quoted (July, 1872) the correspondence between 
Gilbert White and Robert Marsham, of Stratton Strawless (1790 
—1793), has been published in the ‘ Transactions of the Norfolk 
and Norwich Naturalists’ Society’ (1876, vol. 11., pp. 183—195). 
In this correspondence is a letter from Marsham, dated the 31st 
August, 1790, in which the following passage occurs :—‘“‘I find 
by a memorandum of mine of so old a date as Sept. 14, 1722, 
I shot a Ring Ouzel. This was the first my father had seen. 
This shows they are strangers in Norfolk. But I have seen 
them twice since in severe frosts.” 
Ten years ago I made the following entry in an interleaved 
copy of my ‘ Birds of Middlesex’:—‘‘ Davy, the bird-catcher, in 
the Hampstead Road, tells me that his men bring in Ring 
Ouzels to him every year up to Christmas and quite early in the 
