BOHEMIAN WAXWING. 389 
Tue Bonemran Waxwine is one of the most beautiful 
of the birds that visit this country, combining as it does < 
graceful form with a plumage of brilliant and varied colours. 
It is, however, only a winter visitor, and that, too, at most 
uncertain intervals; yet coming, as it then does, in flocks, 
and attracting attention by its gay appearance, as well as 
its numbers, it can hardly be called a very rare bird, 
as there is scarcely a northern county in which it has 
not been frequently killed, and few collections of birds of 
any extent exist which do not include one or more 
specimens. 
Like most of the winter visitors to this country, the 
Waxwings come to us from the north, and have been seen 
in small troops or families of eight or ten in number, 
occasionally in flocks consisting of some scores, and some- 
times even of several hundreds. These are distributed 
over the country as they proceed southward, and a few 
reach the counties on our southern coast. Specimens have 
been killed in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. The bird from 
which the figure was taken in the Synopsis of British Birds, 
by John Walcott, Esq., was killed in Hampshire. Dr. 
Edward Moore says that several have been shot in the 
plantations of Mount Edgecumbe, and Saltram in Devon- 
shire; and Mr. Couch, in a Catalogue of Cornish Birds 
with which he has favoured me, mentions one instance of 
this bird being killed at Lostwithiel in 1829, and another 
near Helston in 1835; but examples so far south are 
much more rare than in the northern counties. Mr. Thomas 
Eyton notices several specimens that have been killed in 
Shropshire ; and Mr. W. Thompson mentions various 
instances of the occurrence of this bird in Ireland. In the 
northern counties of England, and in Scotland, as before 
observed, the appearance of these birds, though accidental, 
