Our Summer Migrants: An Account of the Migratory Birds Which Pass the Summer in the British Islands.Harting, James Edmund
Science
Our Summer Migrants: An Account of the Migratory Birds Which Pass the Summer in the British Islands.
Harting, James Edmund
Birds -- Great Britain
While the Blackcap migrates almost due north and south, the Orphean
Warbler migrates westwards and northwards from the east and southeast,
and _vice versâ_. In North-west India, particularly in the neighbourhood
of Umballah, it is tolerably common. The Rev. Canon Tristram found it
numerous in Palestine, and especially abundant under Mount Hermon.
Messrs. Elwes and Buckley include it in their list of the birds of
Turkey (“Ibis,” 1870, p. 19), and Lord Lilford has noted its occasional
occurrence in spring in the Ionian Isles. Rüppell includes it amongst
the birds of Arabia and Egypt,[15] but either it is not very common in
Egypt, or it has escaped the searching eyes of many English
ornithologists in that country. Mr. O. Salvin found it tolerably common
in the Eastern Atlas, and it has also been met with in Tripoli (_cf._
Chambers, “Ibis,” 1867, p. 104). As it is thus found in North Africa,
and, according to Professor Savi, is a summer visitant to Italy, one
would naturally expect to find it in Malta; but Mr. C. A. Wright, who
has paid great attention to Maltese ornithology for many years, states
that he has never met with it himself, and that only one instance of its
occurrence in Malta is known to him. In Spain it has been observed as a
summer visitant both by Lord Lilford and Mr. Howard Saunders. The
last-named naturalist says (“Ibis,” 1871, p. 212) that it nests there in
May, and refers to the frequent inequality in the size of eggs in the
same nest—a peculiarity which does not seem to have been previously
noticed. In Portugal it appears to be only an occasional summer
visitant, apparently not straying so far westward as a rule. I am not
aware that it has been found further to the south-west than Morocco. Mr.
Tyrwhitt Drake met with it in this country in 1867, but considered it
rare.
According to the observations of Von der Mühle, in his “Monograph of the
European _Sylviidæ_,” and of Captain Beavan on various birds in India
(“Ibis,” 1868, pp. 73, 74), there is good reason to believe that both
the Blackcap and the Orphean Warbler completely lose the black crown in
winter, and reassume it at the approach of the breeding season.
Criticizing these remarks, however, the late Mr. Blyth wrote:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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