204 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
spring, and he concludes that many at least must spend the 
winter here.” 
In December, 1874, Mr. W. E. Beckwith, of Eaton Constantine, 
Salop, observed a Ring Ouzel in his neighbourhood, as he subse- 
quently informed me, his attention being attracted to it by the 
alarm-note, and the bird’s white gorget being distinctly seen by a 
companion who was with him. 
Mr. H. G. Okeden, of T'urnworth, near Blandford, Dorset- 
shire, writing in February last, informed the Editor of ‘The 
Field’ that for the last two years he had remarked that a few 
Ring Ouzels spend the winter in his neighbourhood. 
We have now the Rev. I. Harding’s statement that this bird at 
least occasionally winters in the Malvern Hills. 
It was in consequence of reports, unfortunately not always 
noted, of the occasional wintering of the Ring Ouzel in England, 
that I was induced to characterise this bird in my ‘ Handbook of 
British Birds’ (p. 12) as “ Resident; nesting regularly in the 
hilly parts of the west and north of England and throughout 
Scotland. In the eastern and south-eastern counties of England, 
a spring and autumn migrant.” In other words, I was inclined 
to place it in the same category as the Pied Wagtail, the Meadow 
Pipit, and, I may add, the common Song Thrush, all of which, as 
we know, are to a certain extent migratory, for numbers move 
southward and quit the country in autumn, and yet some may 
always be found here during the winter. ‘The instances of the 
appearance of the Ring Ouzel in winter which have since been 
reported rather tend to confirm this view, and since the bird has 
been detected here in winter in six different counties—Norfolk, 
Salop, Worcester, Middlesex, Hants, and Dorset—it is not un- 
reasonable to suppose that it may have wintered unobserved in 
other counties also. Perhaps those individuals of the species which 
have gone farthest north on the spring migration do not in winter 
cross the English Channel or pass farther south than those counties 
which lie immediately to the north of it. Mr. Rodd has remarked 
that the Stone Curlew or Thick-knee (Gidicnemus crepitans), 
which is generally met with as a summer visitor in other parts of 
England, is never seen in the Lizard and Land’s End districts 
except in winter; and the only way, he thinks, to account for 
this deviation, is to presume that a portion of the migratory 
party, in their southern flight in the autumn, hold a northern 
