here. In Guernsey it is perhaps a little local in its
distribution, avoiding to a great extent such places as the Vale and the
open ground on the cliffs, but in all the gardens and orchards it is
very common.

Spotted Flycatchers appear, however, to vary in numbers to a certain
extent in different years. This year, 1878, they came out in great
force, especially on the lawn at Candie where they availed themselves to
a large extent of the croquet-hoops, from which they kept a good
look-out either for insects on the wing or on the ground, and they might
be as frequently seen dropping to the ground for some unfortunate
creeping thing that attracted their attention as rising in the air to
give chase to something on the wing. Certainly, when I was in Guernsey
about the same time in 1866, Spotted Flycatchers did not appear to be
quite so numerous as in 1878. This was probably only owing to one of
those accidents of wind and weather which render migratory birds
generally, less numerous in some years than they are in others, however
much they may wish and endeavour, which seems to be their usual rule, to
return to their former breeding stations.

Professor Ansted mentions the Spotted Flycatcher in his list, but does
not add, as he usually does, any letter showing its distribution through
the Islands. This probably is because it is generally distributed
through them all. There is no specimen in the Museum.

20. GOLDEN ORIOLE. _Oriolus galbula_, Linnaeus. French, "Le Loriot."--I
have never seen the bird alive or found any record of the occurrence of
the Golden Oriole in Guernsey or the neighbouring Islands, and beyond
the fact that there was one example--a female--in the Museum (which may
have been from Jersey) I had been able to gain no information on the
subject except of a negative sort. No specimen had passed through the
hands of the local bird-stuffers certainly for a good many years, for
Mr. Jago's mother who about twenty or thirty years ago, when she was
Miss Cumber, had been for some considerable time the only bird-stuffer
in the Island, told me she did not know the bird, and had never had one
through her hands. It seemed to me rather odd that a bird which occurs
almost every year in the British Islands, occasionally even as far west
as Ireland, as a straggler, and which is generally distributed over the
continent of Europe in the summer, should be totally unknown in the
Channel Islands. Consequently writing to the 'St