380 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 
fore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray should call 
one species of buzzard duteo aptvorus stve vesptvorus, or the honey 
buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be found in 
one of their nests. The combs were conveyed thither doubtless 
for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, and not for their honey, 
since none is to be found in the combs of wasps. Birds of prey 
occasionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a tame kite picking 
up the female ants full of eggs, with much satisfaction. WHITE. 
That red-starts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender-billed 
insectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, make their 
first appearance very early in the spring, is a well-known fact ; 
though the fly-catcher is the latest of them all in its visit (as this 
accurate naturalist observes in another place), for it is never seen 
before the month of May. If these delicate creatures come to 
us from a distant country, they will probably be exposed in their 
passage, as Mr. White justly remarks, to much greater difficulties 
from storms and tempests than their feeble powers appear to be 
able to surmount: on the other hand, if we suppose them i» pass 
the winter in a dormant state in this country, concealed in caverns 
or other hiding-places sufficiently guarded from the extreme cold 
of our winter to preserve their life, and that at the approach of 
spring they revive from their torpid state and reassume their usual 
powers of action, it will entirely remove the first difficulty, arising 
from the storms and tempests they are liable to meet with in their 
passage ; but how are we to get over the still greater difficulty of 
their revivification from their torpid state? What degree of 
warmth in the temperature of the air is necessary to produce that 
effect, and how it operates on the functions of animal life, are 
questions not easily answered. 
How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named this species the 
honey buzzard, because it fed on honey, when he not only named 
it in Latin duteo aptvorus et vespivorus, but expressly says that “it 
feeds on insects, and brings up its young with the maggots or 
nymphs of wasps?” 
That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, 
sometimes feed on insects I have little doubt, and I think I have 
observed the common buzzard, falco duteo, to settle on the ground 
and pick up insects of some kind or other.—MARKWICK. 
