RTNG-OUZEL. 
TURDUS rORQUATUS. 
The Ring-Ouzel is only a summer visitor to our shores, resorting in numbers during the breeding-season 
to the Avild moorlands of the north and a feAV also remaining to rear their young in se\'eral English counties — 
too often enumerated by various authors to need a repetition in these pages of those I am acquainted Avith. 
Sussex is not included in the lists of those in Avdiieh the nests have been discovered, though I possess the 
best evidence that a pair reared their young, in the spring of 18G5, in the loAver branches of a stunted 
thorn hush in a sloping holloAv in the South Doaaoas near Thunder BarroAV, hetAA^een Portslado and the Dyke 
Hill, tlie juveniles being seen near the same spot, attended by the old birds, a Aveek or so after they 
Avere observed in the nest. My informant (avIio Avas Avell acquainted Avith this species at that time, held a 
situation as gardener at the Manor House, Portslade, and is nOAV at our place near Brighton) also stated 
that the previous year a shepherd had told him that a bird resembling a Blackbird Avith a Avhite ring 
round the throat (Avhich he soon ascertained to he a Ring-Ouzel) had taken up its quarters in a ruined 
hovel in one of the valleys among the hills near Ilangleton, the nest having been placed on the aaMI- 
plate in the space left Avhere one of the rafters had fallen aAvay. Though the Ouzel is generally Avell 
knoAA'n in this part of Sussex, a fcAV being seen annually in spring AVhile on the passage toAvards the north, 
and numbers frequenting the hills about Palmer, Patcham, and Portslade during the latter end of autumn, 
I failed to learn of other instances of this species remaining during summer in the county. 
These birds reach our shores towards the end of April or early in May ; \Adiile fishing on the broads 
and riA^ers in the east of Norfolk about that date or a Aveek or so later, I usually observed a fcAV alighting 
on the m.arsh-AA'alls and Hying to the fields in quest of food. At that season they seldom remained any 
time in the district, appearing eager to resume their passage ; the course they held was invariably due 
north-east, as if hound for the coast. It Avas seldom before the end of the second or third AA^eek in May 
that we noticed any Ouzels in Glenlyon : numbers, hoAvever, frequented the corries and sheltered gullies 
on the rough hill-sides, their nests being placed for the most part on the ledges or in the cracks or crevices 
among the broken slabs of rock that are to he found here and there on the steeper portions of the moors. 
Ouzels appear to suffer occasionally from the attacks of the various predatory species, as a nest or 
tAVO that had been deserted aaos noAV and then noticed; Peregrines or SparroAA'-IIaAvks in all probability 
Avere the culprits. Though Merlins have been accused of destroying these birds, I AA'as unable to bring 
any charges against the few pairs that frequented our ground. The shell of an Ouzel’s egg that had been 
sucked AA'as discoA'cred in the nest of a pair of CroAA's (the one black and the other grey), plainly indicating 
that these plunderers AAm’e by no means averse to varying their usual diet of Grouse eggs Avith those of 
smaller species. While engaged in killing doAvn the vermin in the spring of 1866 on one of the hills to 
the south of the Lyon in Perthshire, a fine old male Avas taken in a clam set for a stoat in the ruins of 
an antiquated shealing. The bird must have had some difficulty in forcing its way up the narrow track 
