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Throughout North Germany it is a common summer visitant, and is generally distributed 
throughout the country ; but, according to Borggreve, it does not ascend higher than 1000 feet 
above the sea-level. In Western Germany I saw it almost everywhere in suitable localities, and 
found it breeding on the Rhine. It is rare in Denmark, but less so in the Duchies than in 
Denmark proper, in which latter part it has, Kjerbolling says, only once been shot. 
In Holland, Mr. Labouchere informs me, it is common from the early part of May to the 
end of August, and appears to have increased in numbers during the last ten years; and in 
Belgium and France it is a very generally distributed and common species during the summer 
season. Both Professor Barboza du Bocage and the Rev. A. C. Smith state that it is common in 
Portugal; and the latter remarks that, strange to say, it had not arrived in that country in the 
middle of May. In Spain it appears to be common: Mr. Howard Saunders speaks of it (Ibis, 
1871, p. 221) as being “abundant in spring and summer, resorting in Andalucia to the thickest 
pine-woods for shelter from the sun, whence it appears rarer than it really is;” and Colonel Irby 
says that it arrives at Gibraltar between the 4th and 21st of April and as late as the 14th and 
15th of May. Some few remain to breed near Gibraltar ; but most pass on further north. 
Passing eastward I find it recorded as numerous in Savoy and Italy, breeding in the northern 
portions of the latter country; but in Sicily and Sardinia it is principally a migrant, though 
some few individuals remain to breed. Mr. C: A. Wright records it as a regular spring visitant 
to Malta, where it would, he believes, breed were it not disturbed. Lord Lilford met with it in 
Corfu and Epirus, where it arrives about the middle of April, but only a few remain to breed, 
the rest passing northward. In continental Greece it is stated to pass in large numbers, 
and a few doubtless remain to breed in suitable localities; but, Dr. Kriiper adds, there is no 
definite proof of any nest having been found. It arrives, he states, in Greece and Asia Minor 
about the middle of April: it arrived at Smyrna in 1864 on the 16th of April, and in 1872 on 
the 23rd of April; at the Parnassus, in 1866, on the 18th of April; in Attica, in 1867, on the 
18th of April, and in 1873 on the 28th of April. Two specimens in the Athens Museum were 
shot on the 18th of April, 1859. The autumn passage commences late in July and in August, 
and lasts until about the middle of September; and Dr. Kriiper shot a female near Smyrna, in 
1871, as late as the 6th of September. In Southern Germany it is generally distributed in 
suitable localities on the plains, but, as elsewhere, it is not found in the mountainous districts. 
The late Mr. Seidensacher informed me that near Cilli, in Styria, it was, he had remarked, one 
of the latest summer visitants to arrive, and one of the earliest to leave. It arrives there from 
the 21st of April to the 1st of May, and deposits, late in May, its four or five eggs, nesting 
usually in firs, oaks, and thorn-bushes. In all the countries bordering the Danube, where there 
are suitable localities, it appears to be tolerably common; and I have received at different times 
many specimens from Turkey. Professor Nordmann states that it is found near Odessa from 
May to September; and Dr. Radde, who observed the present species in Southern Russia during 
passage, remarks that in May they were arriving from the south-east and passing onwards 
towards the north-west. In Asia Minor it passes and repasses at the two seasons of migration, 
and he thinks it not impossible that it may breed near Smyrna; and as regards its occurrence in 
Palestine, Canon Tristram writes (Ibis, 1867, p. 364) as follows:—“ It is rather a bird of passage 
than a summer resident. Numbers of these splendid birds were to be seen for a fortnight from 
