It remains all the year round at Mentone, whence my son, Dr. Franklin Gould, brought me fine examples of 
both sexes killed by himself in winter. “In Italy,” says Mr. Taylor, “I have noticed it to be particularly 
abundant about Susa, and in a less degree about Rome. In the south of Italy and in Sicily I have often 
seen it kept as a cage-bird. Speaking of the bird in the neighbourhood of Pisa, Dr. Henry Giglioli says it 
generally frequents old towers and church-steeples, and pours fourth its glowing melody even from the top 
of the Verruca, a ruined mediaeval fortress which crowns one of the highest summits of the Pisan range.” 
“ Generally distributed through Southern Spain,” says Mr. Howard Saunders in ‘ The Ibis ’ for 1871, “ no 
mattei how wild the locality, the Blue Rock-Thrush wdl always be your companion ; and though very shy 
during the breeding-season, it is by no means so at other times. I could often have shot specimens ; but 
this I could never bring myself to do; and it woidd appear that the bird exercises some influence 
over the usually unimpressionable natives ; for I never saw one amongst the bunches of Thrushes &c. 
either in Spain or Italy. The eggs are difficult to obtain, both from the situation of the nest and from 
the habit the bird has of making several nests before finally deciding which it means to occupy. The 
young are prized for the cage, hut not to the same extent as in Italy, Malta, and Greece, where fabulous 
prices are sometimes given for a good songster.” 
Mr. Wright informs us that the “ Blue Thrush becomes strongly attached to the locality in which it has 
been brought up, and seldom quits it. This affection is also shown in a state of captivity ; and the bird rarely 
long survives removal to a new and strange place. Almost fabulous prices are sometimes given for a good 
songster. An instance is fresh in my memory of a noble lady who considered herself fortunate in securing 
one for £7 10.y.; and two or three pounds is not an unusual price. The male nestlings may easily be distin- 
guished from the females at a very early age by their blue wing-coverts.” 
“ The well-known Blue Thrush,” says Mr. Tristram, “ is to be found in Palestine all the year round 
wherever stones crop above the surface, whether by the shore or on the hills, and especially among ruins, but 
always solitary. Rarely ever were a male and female to be seen together. I scarcely expected to find it (as 
I did) along with the Black-and-white Kingfisher on the coast, sitting among the surf-beaten rocks, and 
feeding on sand-lice and shrimps. On two occasions I killed it from the shore, and had to wade into the 
sea to secure my specimens. Unsociable as it is, it yet frequents the dwelling of man, a taste for stonework 
evidently overcoming all other prejudices ; but nowhere is it more thoroughly at home than among the ruins 
of a deserted and untrodden Roman city, like Gerash, Rabbah, or Gadara. The ‘vomitoria’ of the amphi- 
theatres are exactly to its liking ; and in the recesses of these it has its nest, the male meanwhile perched on 
the top of an old column and uttering his dolorous ditty. Mr. Cochrane and I took a nest with four fresh 
eggs on April 2nd, in one of the robbers’ caves in the Wady Hainam, near the Sea of Galilee. The nest was 
conveniently placed on a shelf far in, without any attempt at concealment, and was like the nest of our 
Blackbird, with mud mingled with the straw, instead of a shell of cow-dung. The young birds are fledged at 
the beginning of May. The eggs are very pale blue, smaller than those of the Thrush.” 
The figures represent vvhat I consider to be male and female, drawn from Mentone specimens, of the size 
of life. 
