NEIGHBOURHOOD OF VIENNA. 607 
Bustards (Otis tarda) are often seen, but not at the same 
places that they frequent during the summer, for in’ Lower 
Austria they are true birds of passage, and do not remain for 
the autumn and winter where they spent the breeding- 
season and the summer, but remove to other ground, generally 
in the immediate neighbourhood of their former quarters. 
There old and young congregate together in great flocks, and 
go through the rigours of the winter in company. A few 
days ago I saw a flock of more than thirty on a field of 
young corn. 
The Great Black Woodpecker (Picus martius) was often 
seen in the Laxenburg Park at the end of September and the 
beginning of October, and the appearance of such a thorough 
forest-bird in these woods so surrounded by plains certainly 
seems strange. I was, however, told by the keepers that it is 
noticed every year, but only for a few days, both in the park 
and the small clumps of trees and covers which lie round it, 
and that it may often be observed flying from tree to tree 
along the willow-fringed brooks, and so passing from one 
wood to another. This betokens a migration, or, at any 
rate, a change of residence, at the commencement of the cold 
weather. 
I will, in conclusion, mention a peculiar duck which I shot 
a little while ago. As already said, great flocks of Mallards 
often visited the Laxenburg pond, and one day I noticed, 
among many others, a particularly large and very dark- 
plumaged bird. I killed it and found myself in the posses- 
sion of a most remarkable specimen. The dark green head, 
blue wing-coverts, little feathers in the tail, and the distribu- 
tion of light and dark in the plumage were just the same as 
in the Mallard, but over the whole of it there was a brownish 
tone, which in some parts, such as the belly, was very dark, 
while the light feathers had a reddish metallic sort of sheen. 
