536 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



on the Spanish side of the River Minho^ which forms the 

 northern border of Portugal. Not being acquainted with 

 the note of the English ChiffchafF, I did not know of the 

 difference until pointed out by Capt. Lynes. 



It has always struck me as curious that while so many 

 insectivorous birds migrate south in the autumn^ this 

 smaller and apparently fragile bird keeps with us through 

 the winter^ which is sometimes cold^ wet, and stormy. 



It is of course difficult to feel quite positive that the 

 Chiffchaffs which are seen here in January are the same 

 birds which nest here in May, but the fact that they sing 

 so early as in the commencement of February seems fairly 

 conclusive evidence that they are the same. 



Hinging the nestlings seems the only means of clenching 

 the matter. The chances^ however, of recovery of one of 

 the few birds which it would be possible to ring would be 

 but remote. Yet a Blackbird, which I ringed during June 

 in the Gerez mountains, was recovered in December of the 

 same year in the same locality. 



The migrants which pass through or winter here are 

 remarkably mute as regards song. 



In my list of the Birds of Portugal, published in ' The 

 Ibis ' in 1888, mention was made of the dialectic difference 

 between the song of the Chaffinch heard in Derbyshire and 

 that in Oporto, but the song of this bird seems to vary some- 

 what according to locality even in this country and in north 

 Spain. 



Wm. C. Tait. 



Oporto, 

 June 15, 1914. 



A Naumann Museum in Cothen. — A Committee has recently 

 been formed in Germany containing not only the names 

 of the principal German ornithologists, but those of 

 other European countries, and including Dr. Hartert and 

 the Hon. Walter Rothschild in England, to commemorate 



