Our last moorland Passere is the Ring-ouzel, a prime favourite with us, and a species with which we have been exceptionally familiar from boyhood's days. This bird always impressed us to a remarkable degree, possibly because it is such a bold and assertive one. With a lifelong experience of this handsome Ouzel--he is known to the country people in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire as the "Tor Ouzel", _i.e._ Mountain Ouzel--we should unhesitatingly state that it is commonest in the district of the Peak. He breeds upon the Cornish uplands, and in Devonshire upon Dartmoor, as we have repeatedly remarked; then we find him on the uplands of Somerset, and increasingly common over the Welsh mountains northwards to the vast solitudes of the Pennine chain. Farther north in Scotland he is found, but our experience is that the bird is local, and common nowhere in the latter country. The moors west of Sheffield, for some reason or another, are specially sought by the Ring-ouzel; and nowhere in that district is the bird more abundant than in the Rivelin Valley and between Stanage Edge and Derwent Edge, and on the Bamford and Bradfield moors. South of Sheffield we may meet with this Ouzel in fair numbers about Dore, Owler Bar, and westwards over the Hathersage uplands.
As most readers may know, the Ring-ouzel is a spring migrant to the British Islands, and the only migratory Thrush that comes to that area to rear its young. Like some other northern migrants, its passage is by no means a slow one. It arrives in South Devon sometimes as early as the end of March, more usually the beginning of April, and what is rather remarkable, this date is practically coincident with its arrival in South Yorkshire. For many years we paid special attention to the migrational movements of this bird, and should give its date of arrival as the first week in April in that district. This seems to indicate beyond question that Ring-ouzels migrate direct to their breeding areas after landing on our southern coasts. They journey in flocks, often of considerable size, and several seasons we were fortunate enough to observe them in companies numbering several hundreds of birds, on the very day of their appearance in the Rivelin Valley. These flocks soon disband; in a day or so they break up, and the birds scatter themselves in pairs over all the suitable breeding-places. The cock bird is not only a handsome one, but very distinctively marked, easily recognized as far as the eye can reach by his pure white gorget; otherwise he very closely resembles the Blackbird in general appearance. The resemblance does not end here, though, and in its habits and movements generally, as well as in the nest and eggs, we have an equal similarity.