Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/177

Rh finch, Corn Bunting, Rook, and Kestrel. The Missel-Thrush might have been present, for at that season, with young flown, it is rather a quiet bird. The Nuthatch also becomes much quieter at that season than it is in the spring; I have seen it in October in the woods about La Roche, some thirty miles to the eastward. And the Long-tailed Tit is not usually numerous enough for one to make sure of seeing it during a search of only ten days' duration. The Rook seems to be anything but generally distributed on the Continent. The Kestrel certainly could not have been otherwise than scarce; I expected it would be common about the cliffs. But I hardly think I could have overlooked the other six species. The conspicuous Pied Flycatcher, which to all appearance would have been exactly suited by the hanging woods coming down to a dashing river and orchards in the Lesse valley, is so local in its distribution that one must never wonder at not finding it. But I was astonished not to see the familiar grey friend of our gardens. Gardens there were in abundance, but I did not see a single Spotted Flycatcher in the district; at all events it must have been rare, for its ways make it conspicuous. When staying a few days at Mechelen, later on, I found it in the Botanic Garden there. The Common Redstart would not easily be overlooked, but I did not see it in Belgium; though R. titys was common. The Goldfinch—conspicuous alike in plumage, song, and call-note—I did not meet with; and the Corn Bunting—which one would at first expect to find enlivening the high-lying, open arable land with its skirling song—remained true to its character of a curiously local bird by shunning the land. But, on considering the matter, I remember that there is an absence of low hedges and walls, as of tall thistle and dock, on this well-cultivated field, so that the Corn Bunting would have no suitable perch whereon to alight after one of those wobbling flights which it delights to take, with its legs dangling. Woodpeckers were scarce. I never saw either the Spotted or Barred (the former I saw once at La Roche in October); and though I occasionally heard a , I could not even decide for certain upon the species. The Ring Dove and Stock Dove were both scarce; the former curiously so.

.—Here, as in some other parts of the Continent, a shy forest or woodland species. Three were singing in