BIRD NOTES BY THE WAY. 5 



building in the hopes of seeing Cypselus pallidas, but without 

 success, and I believe it does not occur there. The Swifts 

 were like bees round St. Peter's and, as I drove back in the 

 evening, like bees they swarmed, and made the air full of their 

 screaming, about the houses lying parallel with the muddy 

 Tiber. Indeed, they dashed and screamed round most of the 

 finer buildings. About the gardens on and near the Tarpean 

 rock were Goldfinches, Blackcaps and Jackdaws. Ancient 

 Rome itself was inhabited by P&sser italice, and Rock Doves, 

 perhaps not wild ; and I was delighted to see an old male 

 Serin with two young ones, come down and peck about among 

 some weeds on the old dark grey walls at the foot of the three 

 arches of the Basilica of Constantine, on the site of the 

 Temple of Peace. Scores of times I have listened to the 

 Serin's little sibilant strain among the palms and fruit trees of 

 the desert oases, or along the oleander and myrtle-clad banks 

 of some stream winding among the wild olive woods, but I 

 was glad to hear the little twitter again in this unexpected 

 place ; nor shall I readily lose the pleasing impression made 

 by that touch of bird-life among those grey ruins, or how 

 pretty the little birds looked in the sun and shade of that 

 blazing afternoon. House Martins were about, and I could 

 hear the Blackbird and Blackcap singing. And then a sweet 

 rippling whistle with which my ear had grown familiar, came 

 to me, and I looked up to see a Blue Rock Thrush (Monticola 

 cyanus) sail from the Temple of Antonius and Faustina to that 

 of Rolomo di Massenzio ; just as I had often seen him sail 

 along the face of some rocky cliff or precipice, singing as he 

 went. Later on he obligingly sailed down, singing again as 

 he flew, and gave me a good view of his pretty blue form as 

 he sat on a bit of the low ruins of the Forum. I mention 

 particularly his singing, because a recent writer in the Ibis 

 intimates that whereas the Rock Thrush (M. saxatilis) some- 

 times sings on the wing, the Blue Rock Thrush does not. 

 My small experience of the two species differs from his 

 strangely, for, as it happens, on the only two or three occasions 

 that I have heard the Rock Thrush sing, he was seated. On 

 the walls of the Colosseum, I noticed another Blue Thrush 

 singing ; Jackdaws, too, were there and P. italice, and Swifts, of 



