BLUETHROAT. A remarkable little Euro pean bird, allied to the robin (and hence some times called 'bluebreast' in England, where it is an infrequent visitor), assigned to the genus Cyanecula; and characterized by a bright-blue throat, separated from the white below it by crescentic bands of black and rust-red. Two species are known, one having a white spot in the centre of the blue (Cyanceula leueocyancal, and ranging from Barbary to Holland and Germany; and the other (Cyanecula sueeica) with a brick red fan-shaped patch in the midst of the blue. (See Plate of SONG-BIRDS with TItausli.) This latter species is highly migratory, spending its winters in tropical Africa and India, and going each summer to breeding-haunts in Scandinavia, northern Russia, Siberia, and western Alaska. One feature of this migration renders it extra ordinary—namely, that the bird has almost never been seen in the countries intermediate between its summer and winter homes, so that apparently it makes the whole journey of not less than 1500 miles in a single flight, either at night or at all invisible altitude. (See MIGRATION OF ANIMALS.)
The Alaskan visitors also cross Bering Strait twice annually, never migrating southward.
The bluethroat is known throughout northern Europe as the Swedish nightingale on account of its fine singing; and the Laplanders style it the bird of the hundred voices,' because of its re markable powers of mimicry. Seebohm and Brown (Ibis, VI., 125, 1876) were greatly impressed by this power in Siberia, where it is exceedingly abundant in thickets and along stream-courses as far north as 71°, making its nest in bushes and weeds. They mention its imitating the trilling of the sandpiper, the rich song of the redwing, and various other birds. "Sometimes he runs these together in such a way as to form a perfect medley of bird-music." Consult the books on the ornithology of Europe, Siberia, and Alaska, mentioned under BIRDS.