48 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



So long as any part of your domain is infested with cockroaches, you need 

 never question the practicability of keeping Redstarts alive, no matter whether 

 your aviary be warmed or unheated ; if you can give them their daily beetle trap 

 to forage in. Redstarts will live ; but, if possible, extreme frosts should be avoided. 



Fatnily— TURDID^. Subfamily— TURDIN^. 



The Red-Spotted Bluethroat. 



Cyanecula siiccica, lylNN. 



ALSO known as the "Arctic Blue-throated Robin"; it is an occasional 

 straggler to Great Britain, but chiefly to the southern and eastern coasts 

 in autumn and spring ; it has, however, been recorded from Scotland.* Seebohm 

 gives the following account of its distribution : — 



" The Arctic Blue-throat breeds within the Arctic circle, or in the birch-regions 

 at high elevations of more southerly climes, both in Burope and Asia ; in the 

 latter continent it breeds as far south as the Himalayas, and occasionally crosses 

 Behring's Straits into Alaska. The Buropean birds pass through Central and 

 Southern Burope and Palestine on migration, and winter in North Africa as far 

 south as Abyssinia ; whilst the Asiatic birds, with the exception of those individ- 

 uals breeding at high elevations in the south, pass through Turkestan, Mongolia, 

 and North China, and winter in Baluchistan, India and Ce3'lon, Burma, the 

 Andaman Islands, and South China." 



The male Bluethroat in breeding plumage has the upper surface brown ; the 

 tail-coverts chestnut, the two central tail feathers dark brown, the remainder with 

 the basal half chestnut and the outer half dark brown ; a white or pale buff 

 superciliary stripe from the base of the upper mandible to some distance behind 



* About sixteen or seveuteen instances of its occurrence had been recorded up to 1877, t>"t in September 

 1883, considerable numbers were observed on the eastern coast (chiefly in Norfolk) and a still greater number in 



