GREY REDSTART. 7 



Redstart is a rare straggler in Britain, and not likely 

 to be met with, liere in its moulting plumage. 



Upon tlie question of specific difference, Degland 

 observes j "M. Gerbe," who named tlie bird after tlie 

 Abbe M. Caire, "writes me word tliat after mu.cb hesi- 

 tation, and many objections made by his friend the 

 Abbe, he had come to the conclusion that R. Carii was 

 only II . tithys in the autumn plumage." "But," con- 

 tinues M. Degland, "it is extraordinary that this 

 hypothesis should be retained after the statement of 

 M. Caire, corroborated by that of the Shepherds and 

 Chasseurs, whom he consulted upon the subject, namely, 

 that this bird breeds in its autumn jDlu^niage, which it 

 never changes at any period of the year; that it only 

 inhabits the highest regions of the Alps; that its song 

 differs sensibly from that of R. tithys; and that it is 

 only a bird of passage in the country inhabited by M. 

 Caire, while the true Tithys is sedentary there. Every 

 research which has been made in the spring to find a 

 bird in intermediate plumage has been in vain." And 

 further M. Degland remarks, "This bird in its passage 

 near Moustiers does not frequent the same places as 

 Tithys; it is only met in valleys, corn fields, meadows 

 bordered with hedges, bushes, osiers, etc., into which 

 it retreats at the slightest noise. On the contrary Tithys 

 always remains in rocky places, and upon old ruins. 

 This difference in habit always prevented M. Caire, 

 who gave me these details, from being mistaken, or 

 from killing one instead of the other. His Redstart 

 appears in the environs of Moustiers-Ste-Marie from the 

 5th. to the 15th. of April; that period past it may be 

 looked for in vain, it is always very high up among 

 the mountains. This year, M. Caire writes, they have 

 been very abundant; he saw more than twenty during 



