Birds. 457 



within a short distance or in the same parallel of latitude. Absence from home at the 

 time of arrival also occasionally prevented the registration of some of the birds enu- 

 merated. As examples of birds which seem to have deserted the district, or which are 

 now but rarely met with, are the Locus tella avicula, grasshopper warbler, the Hirundo 

 urbica, window-swallow or martlet, and the Saxicola rubetra, whin-chat. The first, 

 some twenty-five years ago, used to be common, I may almost say plentiful, about 

 Twizell. This was when the plantations were young, with an abundance of thick her- 

 bage and an undergrowth of whin, broom, &c, a cover congenial to the retired habits 

 of this curious little bird. As this undergrowth died out and gave way to the growth 

 of the forest trees, the grasshopper warbler gradually forsook the locality, and it is now 

 a bird of very rare occurrence, and for the last few years has only been heard occasion- 

 ally at a distance on the verge of the moors to the west of Twizell, where the ground 

 still remains favourable to its habits. The martlet is also now rarely seen at Twizell 

 on its first arrival, or during the breeding season, though it formerly had its clay-built 

 tenements in the angle of almost every window of the house, and beneath the eaves of 

 the stables and other out-houses. Its desertion I also attribute to the change produ- 

 ced by the growth of the large body of plantation around the house, for open districts 

 are the favourite resort of this species, as is shown by the multitudes which select, as 

 breeding places, the eaves and windows of houses in open exposed districts, the rocky 

 precipices of the sea-coast, as about St. Abb's Head, or those of the interior, as I ob- 

 served to be the case in Sutherland, where the limestone or marble cliffs near Inch-na- 

 Damff are annually visited by large colonies of martlets. 



"To the whin-chat (Saxicola rubetra), which is annually becoming less frequent in 

 this neighbourhood, I may add the sedge-warbler (Locustella Phragmitis), the white- 

 throat (Sylvia cinerea), and the cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). The gradual desertion of 

 this species, I think may chiefly be attributed to the great change that has taken place 

 in the features of this northern district within the last twenty or thirty years, in con- 

 sequence of the improved system of agriculture that has been pursued, and under 

 which the draining and reclaiming of marshy and waste pieces of ground has been so 

 generally effected. Many of our members can no doubt recollect when bogs of great- 

 er or less extent, and pieces of ground covered with natural herbage and low brush- 

 wood, were to be seen in almost every direction, I might say in almost every field ; 

 these, however, have now vanished under the spirit of improvement, and their loss, 

 though no doubt considered a gain by the agriculturist, is, I believe, not unfrequently 

 regretted by the botanist and the ornithologist, as it was in these favoured spots that 

 the one was wont to pull the rarest gifts of Flora, and the other to listen to the various 

 notes, or watch the habits of some of the most interesting of our feathered visitants. 



" An inspection of the table will show that a considerable difference takes place in 

 the period of arrival of the various species in different years ; this however may always 

 be traced to the advanced or retarded state of the season, as the migratory flight seems 

 in a great measure regulated by the state of vegetation ; thus I have observed that the 

 arrival of the willow-wren and blackcap may be expected with the first southerly wind, 

 as soon as the larch becomes visibly green, and that of the wood-wren with the first 

 bursting of the buds of the oak and beech. In some seasons the arrival of the earlier 

 visitants is found to be at the usual or average period, whilst that of the later comers 

 is postponed considerably beyond it ; this always happens when the spring has been fa- 

 vourable to the first, but has been succeeded by cold and ungenial weather about the 

 time the flight of the latter should have taken place. 



