78 TEE SMALLER BRITISIT BIRDS. 



Will look for tbee upon the holly bough, 

 Where thou didst chirp thy signal note, ere on 

 The lowly grunsel thou did'st light, and show 

 With such sweet confidence, those darling ones! 

 Thy blithsome face,— and on thee all cried 'benison.' 



THE BLUEBREAST, 



{Sylvia stcecica.) 



PLATE V. PIQUEE IV. 



These two scientific names signifj' a wood, anrl of Pwoclon, and 

 therefore they tell us that this is a woodland bird, of a northern lati- 

 tude. It is sometimes called the Blue-throated Warbler, Redstart, or 

 Robin, its claim of admission to the British Fauna resting in about 

 five specimens taken in different parts of the country. Kent lays 

 claim to the only pair captured, they were shot on the eastern coast 

 near the old towers of Reculvers, in September, 1842, and are now 

 in the Margate Museum. Northumberland, Dorset, and Norfolk, claim 

 the other three j Russia, as far north as Siberia, as well as Spain, 

 France, Germany, and Holland, know this bird well as a summer 

 visitor, and it seems strange that so few specimens have reached our 

 islands, where its principal food, insects, earth-worms, and bei'ries, is 

 at certain seasons very abundant. 



Its chief haunts are said to be low marshy grounds, the outskirts 

 of forests, and margins of streams, when the weather is favourable; 

 but in cold and backward seasons it goes into the more cultivated 

 grounds, approaching dwellings and farms in search of food. Large 

 flisrhts of Bluebreasts migrate from one part of the Continent of Europe 

 to the other, northwards in the spring, and southwards in the autumn; 

 some probably pass over into Africa, whei-e they have been seen. Our 

 rare visitant is a pretty gentle bird, with a sweet song, which it utters 

 from the top of a bush, with the tail expanded and vibrating; hence 

 some have called it the Blue-throated Fan tail, and thought that it ought 

 to be classed with the Quaketails, a sub-family of the Wagtails. Some- 

 times the bird rises a considerable height above the brushwood, in 

 which its nest is probably placed, and sings for awhile on the wing, 

 then alights, it may be fifty or sixty yards from the spot whence it 



