BLACKCAP. 125 



''early nigMingales" of newspaper paragraphs originate 

 simply in the exquisite notes of our common song- 

 thrush, as heard at a late hour during the long spring 

 evenings. 



CURRUCA ATRICAPILLA (Linnaeus). 



BLACKCAP. 



A regular summer visitant, and breeds in Norfolk, 

 arriving somewhat earlier than the last species, and 

 leaving us generally towards the end of September. 

 Occasionally, however, specimens are met with much 

 later, as in 1852, when an old male, in good con- 

 dition, was killed in this county on the 22nd of Decem- 

 ber, as recorded at the time in the " Zoologist," by Mr. 

 J. H. Gurney, p. 3753. It would seem from the remarks 

 of various correspondents in the "Field," that late 

 stragglers of this species are also observed in other 

 counties feeding on the berries of the mountain 

 ash, having probably as much penchant for them 

 as for elder-berries in the early spring, of which I 

 once saw a blackcap partaking with such amusing 

 voracity that he finished a large bunch in detail before 

 he noticed my face within a few inches of his fruit- 

 stained beak. At that moment his combined expres- 

 sion of fright and repletion was one of the most- comic 

 bird scenes I ever witnessed. A small unfeathered 

 biped, caught in the very act of clearing a jam-pot, 

 with his rueful countenance besmeared with the sweets, 

 would perhaps form the nearest approach to the guilty 

 look of that little glutton. I have two eggs taken from 

 a nest at Ketteringham, near the railway cutting, in 

 1859, which were identified by Mr. Hewitson as "rare 

 and beautiful varieties" of the blackcap warbler's, being 

 richly blotched with red on a white ground. 



