Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/41

Rh on a wet windy day during the previous month of April (or May, he was not sure which), and perching upon the first resting-place which presented itself, the balcony of a house facing the sea at Dover, had suffered itself to be frightened in through an open window and eventually caught. It lived in a small wicker-cage from April until September, when I first heard of it, and although the plumage became much soiled by confinement, it remained in good health.

From a description and sketch which Lieut. Pope forwarded, I had no doubt from the first that the bird was the North American Red-breasted Thrush, but it was not until two months later that I was enabled to pronounce with certainty upon the species. Being unable to refer to any of the works on American Ornithology to which I had referred him, Lieut. Pope prevailed upon his friend to forward the bird to me in London, and I duly received it on the 6th November last. My surmise was correct: it was undoubtedly Turdus migratorius.

With the Secretary's permission, I at once placed it in the Western Aviary in the Zoological Society's Gardens, where it may still be seen in good health, and in much improved plumage.

Now, how did this bird get to Dover? On my mentioning the circumstances of its capture to Mr. A.D. Bartlett, whose long experience as Superintendent of the Zoological Society's Gardens gives weight to his opinion in such matters, he was inclined to believe that it had escaped from some homeward-bound vessel in the Channel, and had made for the nearest land; a view which he thought was strengthened by the fact that the bird when he received it was very tame.

In this I do not quite concur, for I imagine that most homeward-bound vessels from New York return to Liverpool, and not viâ Dover; while the bird's tameness is easily accounted for by the fact that when Mr. Bartlett received it into his care it had already been in captivity for about six months. I am thus disposed to regard this as a genuine case of involuntary immigration.

Many such cases are already on record, and although this particular species is not known with certainty to have occurred here before, it has been met with on more than one occasion on the European continent, and, from its migratory habits, is just one of those birds which one would naturally expect now and then to arrive.