60 REPORT ON THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 



of the extraordinary nuraber of Jays seen during the winter in 

 our English woodlands. This seems especially to have been the 

 case south of a line drawn from Flamborough Head to Portland 

 Bill, in Dorset.* 



Extraordinary numbers of the Common Hedge Sparrow 

 {Accentor modularis) — "the dunnock " of the English schoolboy, 

 the ''blue Janet " of Scotland — passed over Heligoland in October, 

 more especially on the 6th, 7th, and 8th ; and it is curious that 

 on the 8th of the same month they swarmed in astonishing 

 numbers, both at Spurn and in N.E. Lincolnshire. 



The Woodcock arrived on the east coast on the night of 

 Oct. 12th, or early morning of the 13th; wind E., strong, fog, 

 and drizzling rain. On the morning of the 13th they are recorded 

 from nine stations, covering 250 miles of coast-line, from the 

 Fame Islands to Orfordness.f It is fair to suppose that this, the 

 " great flight " of the season, did not start from the same locahty, 

 but from various parts of the opposite coast of Europe, — places 

 widely apart. Both previous and subsequent to their passage the 

 weather had been much of the same character over the North 

 Sea. Why they should start simultaneously on this special 

 evening, and how they managed to "keep touch," to use a 

 military term, during a passage of several hundred miles across 

 a stormy sea, in fog and drizzling rain, so as to arrive about the 

 same time at their Tel-el-Kebir on our English sand-hills, is one 

 of those points in the phenomena of migration which will 

 probably take some time and more extended observations, 

 especially on the op]30site coast-line, to clear up. 



An interesting entry in one of the returned schedules, that 

 from the Inner Dowsing l.v., placed seventeen miles E. of 

 Sutton, on the Lincolnshire coast, is that of two Hawfinches, 

 which came on board on the evening of Oct. 20th, a strong 

 S.S.W. wind blowing, and remaining all night, left again at 

 daj^break, their course being from S.E. to N.W., the course 

 followed by a large proportion of our immigrants. As far as we 

 are aware this is the first notice of Hawfinjches having been seen 



* Common Jay. Additions and unusual numbers observed at Arden, on 

 Loch Lomond side, subsequently reported by James Lumsden, Esq., is the 

 only report of Jays I have got in Scotland. — J. A. H. B. 



I Also "great flight" same time, Tsle of May. East coast of Scotland 

 report. 



