20 J. E. LITTLEBOY THE BIEDS OF OUR DISTRICT. 



ti'ibutcd throughout our district in great abundance. Every one 

 must luive listened to the melodious notes of these gifted birds. 

 They love to frequent a garden, and will generally select the top- 

 most branch of a shrub or tree from which to pour forth their 

 plaintive melody. They sing much later in the evening than most 

 of the other birds. "Long after the varied music of the rest has 

 ceased, the song of the thrush yet remains ;" and many a time have 

 we listened to it, in our garden at Hunton Bridge, until the shades 

 of evening have darkened into night, and we have felt almost spell- 

 bound to the spot. The eggs of the thrush are often to be found as 

 early as the middle of March. They are prolific birds, often rearing 

 two, and sometimes three broods during the season. The young 

 fledgelings are voraciously fond of fruit, and woe to the unfortu- 

 nate strawberry-bed that happens to lie within their reach. At 

 Hunton Bridge we are compelled to net all our strawberries or 

 scarcely one would ripen ; and even when this is done, the young 

 throstles will frequently push their way under the netting, and in. 

 this manner we have often caught many of them. The thrush is a 

 determined enemy of every description of snail ; he will rap them 

 against a stone with his beak until the shell is broken, and the snail 

 is then instantly demolished. Quantities of broken snail shells may 

 often be noticed on a gravel walk as the result of these operations. 

 The redwing and the fieldfare are both migratory. They reach us 

 from their northern homes about the end of October or the middle 

 of November. The redwing is the smallest of its class ; in appear- 

 ance it much resembles the song thrush, but can be distingviished 

 from it by the red tinge on a portion of its wings. The fieldfare 

 may be regarded as the special representative of winter. "The hoar 

 visage of winter," to use the metaphor of De Quincy, would hardly 

 be complete without him ; we look for these birds almost as to a 

 certainty as we drive along the hard and frosty roads on a cold 

 December morning, and presently we descry a considerable number 

 of them, swooping across, right in front of lis, till they alight, 

 possibly, upon the snow-covered furrows of an adjoining field. The 

 name of the blackbird is a household word in almost every family ; 

 his magnificent black plumage, his rapid flight, and his clear, bell- 

 like note are familiar to all of us. He begins to build early in 

 February, and, like the young throstles, his progeny are devout 

 believers in the excellency of strawberries and other early fruit. 



The hedge-sparrow and the robin belong to the same family. 

 The former of these appears to be the victim of a misnomer. It 

 unquestionably belongs to the Warblers, and possesses but few 

 characteristics in common with the plebeian sparrow. The hedge- 

 sparrow is an unobtrusive confiding little bird ; its nest, containing 

 four or five bright blue eggs, may generally be found by about the 

 middle of March, and its cheerful, musical song, "soft and gentle 

 like itself," may be heard from almost every hedge-row, and on 

 almost every day throughout the year. We have many more 

 atti'active and brilliant songsters than the hedge-sparrow, but we 

 have few more constant attendants on our daily walks, and we know 



