BIRDS 141 



while, if we cross this range of hills, we can find it breeding in 

 the Alston valley, whence George Borrow sent eggs of this 

 finch to T. C. Heysham as long ago as 1835. 



Elsewhere in Cumberland I have noticed this Redpoll breed- 

 ing sporadically or gregariously in many places, near Stapleton, 

 Brampton, Longtown, Bowness, Carlisle, Aspatria, Cockermouth, 

 Bassenthwaite, Keswick, and Penrith, — generally, in fact, 

 throughout the county, with the exception of the neighbour- 

 hood of our most western sea-board. It does not much affect 

 moorland districts, — preferring nursery gardens, hedgerows, 

 and the skirts of woods. The first eggs are laid in May. The 

 materials of the nest vary. One which was built in a beech 

 hedge last summer, near Drumburgh, consisted of fibres of plants, 

 dry grass, and moss, lined with a little cow's hair and the down 

 of the cotton grass. Many of those which breed with us migrate 

 away in autumn, but large flocks of Redpolls often visit us in 

 winter. On the 1st of December 1890, some friends and I 

 came across a flock of about a hundred Redpolls in a rough 

 field near Burgh. I had never seen such a number in a single 

 flock before. The males of this Redpoll often breed in female 

 dress, i.e. previous to acquiring a pink breast. 



TWITE. 



Linota jlavirostris (L. ). 



The Twite nests thinly on the Pennine range, as also upon 

 some of the mountains in the centre of Lakeland. Nevertheless, 

 in wandering over the wildest of our moors, I have often mar- 

 velled at its absence, missing the lively notes and sprightly 

 gestures of a species which has elsewhere occurred to most 

 people in considerable plenty, as for example in the Hebrides. 

 The Twite does not breed on the Furness Mosses, nor does it 

 nest generally on the wet ' floes ' in the vicinity of the English 

 Solway. Toddles Moss, however, has long been a favourite 

 breeding station of the Twite, one in which the eggs have often 

 been taken, a remark which is equally true of the Solway Flow. 

 In a paper written by the elder Gough, dated from Middleshaw, 

 Westmorland, on the 21st of February 1812, a passage occurs 



