7 
in great numbers. Savi records it from Piedmont and Liguria, Monti from Brianza in 1829, 
and Costa notices the capture of a single specimen in the Neapolitan district. Prof. Doderlein 
records only one specimen from the district of Modena, and adds that up to the present time he 
has not obtained it in Sicily. The Ritter von Tschusi Schmidhofen informs me that “it occa- 
sionally appears in large flocks in Southern Germany during the winter. Palliardi says that 
they have been seen very late in the season in Bohemia, and Schab shot specimens at Mistek, in 
Moravia, in May.” Mr. G. C. Taylor (Ibis, 1872, p. 230) records it from Turkey, where, he 
says, he never saw it in the flesh, but obtained one collected near Pera by Mr. Churchill, a 
gentleman who had formed a collection of birds procured in that vicinity. It is recorded from 
Southern Russia by Dr. G. Radde, who states (J. f. O. 1854, p. 56) that it visits the Crimea even 
during mild winters when the cold is not greater than 5°, and he observed flocks of from ten to 
fifteen individuals, chiefly in immature plumage, in the mountains. With regard to the earlier 
recorded occurrences on the Continent I am again indebted to Professor Newton for the following 
information :—‘ Aldrovandus records a vast irruption of these birds into Italy in the year the 
Emperor Charles V. was crowned at Bologna (1530). According to Gesner there was so great a 
number of them on the Rhine between Mainz and Bingen in 1552 that when flying they cast a 
shade like that of nightfall. In 1571 they again appeared, says the former authority, in Italy 
about Modena and Placentia, with much foresight avoiding the neighbourhood of Ferrara, where 
an earthquake and flood soon after happened ; and earlier in the same year they no less astonished 
the Belgians by an invasion in force.” 
To the eastward the Waxwing occurs throughout Siberia to China, inhabiting the extreme 
north in the summer, migrating southward in the winter. Middendorff writes that it arrived at 
Udskoj-Ostrog at the end of October and remained there until March. In October and at the 
end of the year he saw it on the southern slope of the boundary mountains in Mantchuria, but 
only in small flocks. Dr. Radde observed them in the lower Angara valley on the 8th October, 
and on the 14th, when at the village of Urikowskaja, fifty versts below Irkutsk, he observed 
large flocks on migration coming from the north-east and flying very high. They remain late in 
Southern Siberia; and he noticed them at Irkutsk at the end of April. In the Bureja mountains 
he shot old males on the 29th of March, and young ones on the 13th of April. Dr. Dybowski 
records it as common on the Onon in the winter, and writes (J. f. O. 1872, p. 442) that “it 
arrives in Dauria in flocks in the winter, and is then common, but does not appear in equal 
numbers every year. They usually arrive late in October. In 1871 we saw several pairs in the 
conifer-woods in the subalpine mountains on the road to Chamardaban, but could not discover 
their nests, as the snow was then too deep in the woods.” Dr. Dybowski does not give the exact 
date when he saw these birds; but, judging from the fact that the snow was in the woods, | think 
they could not have been breeding thus early in the season. It has been met with in Northern 
China by Mr. R. Swinhoe, who writes (P. Z.S. 1863, p. 298) that it is occasionally seen there. 
during winter. 
In America this species is common in the extreme north, being a much more boreal bird 
than its close ally the Cedar-bird (Bombycilla cedrorwm). Professor Baird, in his ‘ Review of 
American Birds,’ p. 406, gives its range in America as “not hitherto found in the western 
province. In winter extending along the Rocky Mountains and the plains as far south as Fort 
RQ — 
NX 
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