62 
MERULID^.. 
THE SONG THKUSH. 
Timlm musicus. 
This bird appears in some of the old lists as a well-known 
visitor, but here again the speckled breast has been the cause 
of error. Gladly indeed should I have welcomed the old 
familiar notes during the nearly soogless spring, but the con- 
fident assurances of my friends were never realised; and when 
the first and almost the only one I ever saw in Shetland met 
the usual death of all my garden favourites, I could scarcely 
regret the event, so little did the cowering, nearly starved 
victim resemble the bright and happy bird which must ever 
remain in my mind associated with sunshine and home. 
According to Messrs Baikie and Heddle, it is common and 
resident in Orkney, where it breeds regularly in various places, 
— a fact which is by no means extraordinary, when we remem- 
ber that although the two groups of islands are so close 
together, far better shelter for arboreal species is afforded in 
Orkney than in Shetland, where even the very heather is 
stunted, and where generation after generation of mankind may 
pass away without seeing a shrub of as much as eighteen 
inches in height. 
Some years ago, being informed, upon what I then con- 
sidered good authority, that the Song Thrush was repeatedly” 
shot in the neighbourhood of Lerwick, I begged for a specimen, 
and ere long received a sadly mutilated Fieldfare, the usual 
mistake having been fallen into. 
The Song Thrush is not included in Captain Feilden’s ac- 
count of the birds of the Faroe Islands. 
THE KEDWING. 
T Urdus iliacus. 
By merely substituting the name of the Eedwing for that of 
the Fieldfare, my remarks upon tlie former scarcity and pre- 
sent abundance of the one would apply with ecpml truth to the 
