CLARKE : THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 75 



TUEDUS PILAHIS L. 

 Fieldfare. 



A common winter visitant. 



W. Eddison says : ' I am well assured that both this winter visitant and 

 lliacus very frequently stay the year round in several places near Hudders- 

 field, and that he has many times seen them in the summer months ; mention 

 is also made of its breeding in Yorkshire by W. Yarrell. It bred last year 

 at Lepton, near Huddersfield. ' — Thomas Allis, 1844. 



It is hardly necessary to remark that there is not a particle 

 of evidence as to the Fieldfare's ever having nested in the 

 county ; indeed all we know on the subject is contained in Mr. 

 Allis's statements quoted above ; so that what Tunstall said of 

 this species one hundred years ago is true to-day, namely : ' I 

 have known them in the north as far as the latter end of March, 

 yet never heard them sing, or that they built there.' 



As an abundant and widely distributed winter visitant this 

 species arrives in flocks usually during the latter half of October 

 and in November and remains until April. In some seasons 

 the autumn immigration commences as early as the end of 

 September, as in 1875 for instance, while on the 24th of Jan. 

 1880, numbers arrived on the Holderness coast; nor was this 

 late movement confined to the east coast of Britain, for Herr 

 Gatke informed Mr. Cordeaux that from the 21st to the 24th 

 of that month quantities crossed Heligoland from the east. 

 These birds were in all probability driven from northern 

 Europe by an outburst of severe cold in what had hitherto 

 been there a mild season. Like its congeners it suffers during 

 severe seasons, and during the winter of 1879-80 was very scarce 

 after the arctic weather of the preceding year. 



Prior to leaving for its breeding-zone, the Fieldfares in some 

 districts assemble in great numbers, and the writer knows a 

 small plantation bordering the stream traversing a secluded dell 

 in Washburndale where in mid-April they may be seen in 



