RING-OUSELS. 67 
The next rare birds (wliicli were procured for me last week) 
were some ring-ousels, turdi toi^quati. 
This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being 
with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told 
us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries, some birds 
like blackbirds, with rings of white round their necks : a neigh- 
bouring farmer also at the same time observed the same ; but, 
as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I men- 
tioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 
4th, 1767 : (you however paid but small regard to what I said, 
as I had not seen these birds myself :) but last week the afore- 
said farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, 
shot two cocks and two hens : and says, on recollection, that he 
remembers to have observed these birds again last spring, about 
Lady-day, as it were, on their return to the north. Now per- 
haps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, 
but belong to the more northern parts of Europe ; and may re- 
tire before the excessive rigour of the frosts in those parts ; and 
return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates. If this be 
the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage, con- 
cerning whose migrations the writers are silent • but if these 
birds should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here 
is a migration disclosed v/ithin our own kingdom never before 
remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond 
the bounds of our island to the south ; but it is most probable 
that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would 
have continued so long unnoticed in the southern counties. 
The ousel is larger than a blackbird, and feeds on haws ; but 
last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries . 
in the spring it feeds on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that 
season, in March and April. 
I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on 
the study of reptiles) that my people, every now and then of 
late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is 
63 feet deep, a large black warty lizard with a fin-tail and yel- 
shed very soon after leaving the nest, and is replaced by another of closer texture and more 
rufous hue, the upper feathers of which have each one dark bar across, the primaries not being 
shed till the spring, when the birds assume the adult male and female dress, as described in 
books, the latter much resembling that of the young:, but without the barring. In autumn 
they of course moult again, at which time I believe both sexes assume the plumage last described, 
and the following spring I suspect that both acquire that which has been hitherto considered 
exclusively characteristic of the adult male, several fertile females having to my knowledge been 
killed in this dress, differing in appearance only from the male in bemg less bright. These 
changes have escaped the notice of all our naturalists. — Ed 
F 2 
