are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never choose
to breed in England: but that they should not think even the
highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered enough, is a
circumstance still more strange and wonderful.. The ring-ousel,
you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round; so that we have
reason to conclude that those migrators that visit us for a short
space every autumn do not come from thence.

And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that those
birds were most punctual again in their migration this autumn,
appearing, as before, about the 30th of September: but their flocks
were larger than common, and their stay protracted somewhat
beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the whole winter with
us, as some of their congeners do, and then left us, as they do, in
spring, I should not be so much struck with the occurrence, since it
would be similar to that of the other winter birds of passage; but
when I see them for a fortnight at Michaelmas, and again for about
a week in the middle of April, I am seized with wonder, and long
to be informed whence these travellers come, and whither they go,
since they seem to use our hills merely as an inn or baiting place.

Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very
amusing; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should
delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean! Some
country people in the winter time have every now and then told me
that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs; but on
considering the matter, I begin to suspect that these are some
stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes perhaps
may rove so far to the southward.