WAYSIDE NOTES FROM THE CONTINENT. 359 
reddish-coloured bird, very shy and retiring, and particularly 
chary of its notes, which commenced at intervals, with much 
promise of a continuance, ceased as suddenly ; it was so skulking 
that I never got my glass fairly upon it, and had to give it up at 
last ; not reluctantly, as the closeness of the swamp was over- 
powering, the heat of the sun at noon having on that day 
been 85° in the shade. In this same place I noticed three young 
Blue-headed Wagtails sitting together on a dead branch over 
one of the pools, the old birds coming at times to feed them with 
insects. This Wagtail (Gelbe Schafstelze) seems not uncommon 
in the Elbe meadows and along the river. The White Wagtail 
(Weisse Bachstelze) extremely plentiful; I invariably saw a pair 
about the wooden landing-stages where the steamboats call to 
take in or discharge passengers and goods, also very often a pair 
or two on the long rafts of timber which are constantly passing 
down stream. Some ornithologists assert that the call-note of 
this species is distinguishable from that of our English Pied 
Wagtail, but I failed to perceive this. With regard to the songs 
of birds on the Continent, those of the Thrush and Blackbird 
struck me as decidedly varying from the same as heard in my 
own garden in England, and still more so those of the Chaffinch 
and Yellowhammer. In the Saxon Switzerland I noticed a pair 
of Grey Wagtails, Motacilla melanope, by the side of a small 
trout-stream ; these were the only examples I saw in Germany. 
I saw the Green Woodpecker twice near Dresden, and the 
Middle-spotted Woodpecker (Picus medius) in the pine-forest near 
Herrenskretchen. In various localities a few Buzzards and 
Kites; one Marsh Harrier beating over some swampy meadows 
on the Ilmenau, near Luneburg. Of the smaller raptorial birds 
a few Kestrels and Sparrowhawks, and a Merlin; the latter on 
the sand-dunes near Dunkirk, in France, a locality which, from 
the great abundance of Wheatears, Whinchats, and other small 
birds, must be a happy hunting-ground for the small Falconide. 
These wide sea-dunes on the South Belgian and French coast 
would doubtless prove an excellent station for an ornithologist 
in the autumn, and yield a great many rarities when the stream 
of migrants, which we know follows the west coast of Europe, is 
passing southward. There is an abundance of shelter, such as 
small birds delight in, amongst the dense thickets of sallow 
thorn, the grey-blue patches of sea-holly, and immense extent of 
