73 



THE CHIFFCnAFF. 



Plnjlloscopus rufus (Bechst.). 



Chiffchaffs were reported to be wintering in some numbers 

 at Penzance (Cornwall), but were not quite so numerous as 

 usual. One was shot there in January, a second in west 

 Somerset on the 16ih of the same month, and a third was 

 heard in the south o£ Cornwall on the last day of February. 

 It has been suggested, apparently with good reason, by 

 observers in Somerset that the birds seen in that county 

 during the first half of March were some of the winter- 

 residents, and this may be true of some of the other early 

 records. 



This species entered the country along the whole of the 

 south coast, but chiefly on its western half. Making allow- 

 ance for the winter-residents above mentioned, the first 

 migrants seem to have landed between the 14th and 17th of 

 March and distributed themselves sparsely over the southern 

 counties and up the Welsh border as far as Shropshire and 

 perhaps Lancashire. 



The first large immigration took place along the whole of 

 the south coast between the 26th to the 29th of March, the 

 majority of the birds coming in on the western side. Many 

 of them seem again to have passed north along the Welsh 

 bordei*, spreading east and west into the western midlands 

 and Wales, and reaching Denbigh, Yorkshire and West- 

 moreland on the 28th. The eastern birds, fewer in number, 

 seem to have spread more slowly through the Home 

 counties and East Aiiglia, Northampton being reached on 

 the 28th, Rutland and Lincoln on the 29th and Leicester 

 on the 30th. 



The second immigration, a small one, arrived on the 



