ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES. 



9 



OCCURRENCE IN NORTHUMBERLAND OF THE 

 RED-BREASTED FLYCATCHER. 



By GEORGE JtiOLAM, 

 Bei'ivick - on - Tzveed. 



On the 5th of October, 1883, I was fortunate enough to shoot a 

 specimen of the Red-breasted Flycatcher {Mitscicapa parva Bechst.) 

 in our garden in Berwick ; and the example is now in my 

 collection. On examination it proved to be a young male, 

 in the sombre brown of the autumnal plumage, and in colouring 

 it agrees generally with the short description given in the last 

 edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds.' The tertials are broadly 

 margined and tipped with pale yellowish brown, and the breast and 

 under parts are more or less of a fine warm buff. The tail, which 

 consists of twelve feathers, is hair brown and white, the brown being 

 darkest on the middle feathers ; the first three pairs of quills from the 

 outside are brown and white in nearly equal proportions, the basal 

 halves being white, the tips brown. The fourth pair have the outer 

 web only, white for about an inch near the middle of the feather, with a 

 small portion of the inner web next the shaft of a like colour : while 

 on the fifth pair from the outside the white is confined to a rather 

 narrow margin on a small portion of the outer web. The sixth or 

 centre pair are wholly brown. In the fourth edition of Yarrell's 

 * British Birds,' above referred to, it is stated that the Red-breasted 

 Flycatcher has only ten feathers in the tail ; but Professor Newton 

 informs me that since the account for that work was written, he has 

 found that specimens are met with having twelve feathers : and 

 Mr. John Hancock, to whom I have often been indebted for useful 

 information, at all times most kindly given, tells me that he finds, by 

 examination of a large series of specimens in his collection, that 

 twelve is the normal number of tail feathers in M. parva; and that the 

 only specimen he has which has only ten, has evidently lost two. 

 Twelve would therefore seem to be the number of tail feathers in this 

 species, and, unless abnormally, that number probably never varies. 



This Flycatcher is quite new to the avifauna of the northern 

 counties of England ; in fact it has only on three previous occasions 

 been noticed in the British Islands, once near Falmouth, when two 

 birds were seen and one of them killed, and twice in the Scilly Islands. 



Nesting of the Twite on Thorne Waste.— in the Handbook of 



Yorkshire Vertebrata, page 31, the nesting of the Twite on Thorne Waste, which 

 is only just above sea-level, prior to 1 844, is mentioned on the authority of the late 

 Mr. Thomas Allis. You maybe interested to know that I found a nest of this bird, 

 with eggs, on the Goole edge of the Waste, on the 26th of April this year. It 

 was placed low down in some heather, overhanging a small cutting from which 

 peat had been cut. — Thomas Bunker. 



Aug. 1884. 



