Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/34

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A bird of passage, and of more than common interest. It comes to our shores in the autumn and departs in the spring; and, though British nests and eggs have been reported as taken, I believe the gravest doubt encircles all such statements. I have special reasons for remembering this bird, and I will relate why. On two occasions I have publicly recorded observations of its existence in this country at what were deemed unusual dates, and on both occasions my communications were as publicly called in question, and it was insinuated that I had blundered in my identification,—in short, had mistaken the Mistle-Thrush for the Fieldfare. That such errors are of frequent occurrence with those who do not make birds a particular study is, I freely admit, beyond question, and consequently there is no reason really why an obscure ornithologist like myself should feel hurt at the suggestion of such lamentable ignorance. All the same, the fact remains that in my own estimation I am just as likely to confuse the two species as any two letters of the alphabet.

In the first case: in 'The Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland' I recorded a Fieldfare's exceptionally early appearance at Lowesby on Sept. 2nd, 1877,—it should have been printed 1878,—and I am at liberty here to amplify this brief notice with a few details, though I would first like to point out that in Mr. J.E. Harting's edition of 'The Natural History of Selborne' there is reference to a Fieldfare shot in a garden near Kirby Muxloe, in Leicestershire, on July 29th, 1864, and forwarded to the editor of 'The Field' for examination. It had been observed about the garden all the summer.

With regard to the Fieldfare seen at Lowesby, however, I remember the occasion distinctly. A cheery companion and friend—alas! long gone from these scenes—and myself had just started out shooting, and we had only got a little distance beyond the plantations that fringe the lower side of the Hall, when my attention was suddenly arrested by a kind of chuckle with which I am infinitely more familiar in mid-winter than during the opening days of Partridge-shooting. The chuckle was repeated more than once, and in a twinkling I descried a Fieldfare perched high up in a lofty tree. I tried to stalk the bird, but it was far