Birds of Britain 



roving gipsy's life over our Islands, wandering from the 

 northernmost corners of Scotland to the south of England, 

 obeying no will but his own, and guided by no special 

 impulse beyond that of satisfying his own appetite, — by 

 no means a difficult task, as little in the way of berries or 

 insects comes amiss to him. His common name of Missel 

 Thrush (Mistletoe Thrush) is derived from his supposed 

 fondness for this berry, but this is a point on which doubt 

 still exists. 



On the day when we first saw him, however, he was 

 engaged in picking up the flies, ants, beetles, and other 

 live prey which the scanty vegetation on the hill enabled 

 him to see and capture easily. In spots where the ground 

 was loose he would dig in his bill and turn over a small 

 bit of earth, then stand with head held expectantly on one 

 side, literally waiting for something to turn up. Often he 

 would repeat this several times with little or no result, 

 then all of a sudden down would go his head and we would 

 make out something between his mandibles, then would 

 come a quick movement of his head and his beak would be 

 empty again. 



Suddenly one of his brothers near uttered an alarm-note, 

 and in an instant he was up and across the valley, where 

 for the moment we could not follow him. 



Thus, then, he spends his life from May till January : on 

 cliffs by the sea, on bare moorlands, in thick woods — where 

 the mountain-ash berries in their season form a favourite 

 food — over open, cultivated fields where the freshly-turned 

 furrow has unearthed abundant delicacies — or in the country 

 hedgerow where hips and haws, elderberries and sloe are 



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