BLUE-WINGED JAY. 725 



coppices, or umbrageous woods of the county of Leicester. " I 

 believe,"'"' he adds, " none of our woodland species are more 

 destructive to the eggs of the smaller birds. I have found its 

 nest in the holly, as well as in the ' hazel mantled with wood- 

 bine,"' but never in a hedge, or hedge-row tree."" In a list of 

 some of the birds of Glamorganshire obtained by Mr Hepburn 

 for me from the Rev. James Evans, Landaff, is the following 

 notice. " The severest conflict I ever witnessed between birds 

 was between a cock Blackbird and a cock Missel Thrush, on 

 the one hand, and a Jay on the other. The conflict was car- 

 ried on to the music of the most horrid shrieks I ever heard. 

 It ended in the Jay disappearing in a cloud of his own feathers. 

 The assailants retired together in another direction, seemingly 

 perfectly satisfied. As it was in the breeding season, the Jay 

 had probably attacked their nests." " Of the voracious habits 

 of this bird," says Mr Durham AV^eir, in a recent communica- 

 tion, " I was not until lately aware. Having got a male which 

 was caught in a trap on the afternoon of the 26th January 1888, 

 I put him into the tool-house of my garden, in which I kept a 

 variety of birds. Upon going in next morning I was asto- 

 nished at finding that two of them had been devoured. I 

 thoudit that rats had killed them, but I soon discovered that 

 I had been mistaken. A Rose Linnet having alighted upon 

 the branch of a tree which I had fixed in the wall, and upon 

 which the Jay was sitting, he caught him by the throat with 

 his bill, and killed him in a few minutes. In about half an 

 hour after this, he preyed upon a green linnet, and after pluck- 

 ing off the feathers, he swallowed the whole bit b}' bit, except 

 the head " 



TURDUS PILARIS. THE FIELDFARE THRUSH. 

 Vol. II, p. 105. 



Mr Harley has ascertained that even in a partially wooded 

 district, this bird, sometimes at least, reposes on the ground. 

 " In the neighbourhood of Leicester it appears in September, 

 and departs in ^lay and June. It most certainly roosts on the 



