174 THK ZOOLOGIST. 
NOTES AT AVIGNON (Aprin 2np-1lltrH, 1908). 
By W. Warpre Fowuer, M.A. 
Avienon, being on the Lower Rhone and but a short distance 
from the apex of its delta, should be an excellent place for 
observing the passage of birds from the Mediterranean into 
France in early April: the more so, as the Rhone there flows in 
two channels enclosing a flat alluvial island at least two miles 
long, which is full of excellent cover, as well as of cultivated 
land. Unfortunately the place is liable to be continually swept 
from the north-west by that invigorating but uncomfortable 
wind, the Mistral, which blew with more or less violence the 
whole time I was there, and this may partly account for the 
curiously negative results of my daily investigations. ‘“‘ La 
chasse,” the favourite amusement of the Provencal bourgeois, 
cannot explain this, for no one was shooting during my stay, 
though it doubtless explains the extraordinary paucity of resident 
birds, of which I saw no more than a few Crested Larks on the 
high ground, and here and there some Tits (Great and Marsh, 
for the most part), with one or two Creepers, a Kestrel, a Reed- 
Bunting, and a solitary Blackbird. 
As I was at Avignon and Nismes in 1895, from April 7th to 
12th, and have a diary of those days, I combine the two records 
in this brief paper. They tally almost exactly in every par- 
ticular, except that on the 12th in my earlier visit, which was a 
very hot day, there seemed to be distinct signs of a rush of 
migrants. On the whole it would seem that migration on the 
Lower Rhone is hardly more forward in early April than with us 
in Engiand. 
On my arrival on the 2nd, as in 1895, I at once heard the 
Blackcap’s song, and with this I had to be content during my 
whole stay, for no other bird sang either regularly or whole- 
heartedly. But the Blackcap was to be found in every bit of 
cover on the island, and also on the heights, and, as its numbers 
