222 BRITISH BIRDS. 
whither they repair at nightfall to roost. They prefer districts where the 
evergreens are dense and plentiful—laurels, yews, and hollies a century 
old or more, and the intervening space between them taken up by thick 
underwood and forest trees, and where huge sycamores, elms and beeches, 
oaks and horsechestnut form a regular labyrinth of arboreal seclusion. 
They feed in the lands adjoining, pasture and turnip-fields, stubbles and 
meadows, with here and there a “summer fallow.” In a district like this, 
from October till April, the Redwing is a common bird. In the daytime 
they frequent the pastures ; and when the dusk is falling they seek the 
evergreens of the gardens and shrubberies. Regularly every year the birds 
will come, and, if they are not molested, remain stationary throughout the 
winter, giving animation by their presence to the landscape, and filling 
the wintery air with their cheerful pleasing notes. But the Redwing has 
other haunts, quite as dear to it as those in our own land. In spring 
the Redwings seck the northern forests for the purpose of propagating 
their species. In Scandinavia they frequent the fir- and birch-woods. 
Here amongst these scattered forests, which lie at the feet of the high 
stony ranges of the fells, the Redwing finds a summer home. Wild and 
romantic are its breeding-grounds—plains and valleys, meadow and culti- 
vated land, and dells covered with the marsh-loving alder and willow and 
birch trees growing in wildest luxuriance. Vast morasses, rivers, inland 
lakes whose margins are fringed with a heavy growth of various reeds and 
sedges, forest lands, meadows and plains are the features of the ever- 
changing landscape. In such wild and secluded regions as these, the 
border land between forest and fell, the Redwing breeds, far from those 
busy haunts of men which the bird delights to frequent so confidingly 
when the blasts of winter render its northern home untenable. 
The migrations of the Redwing form a prominent feature in its life- 
history. When the woodlands are painted with the ruddy hues of autumn 
and the corn is garnered, the first flocks of the Redwing may be looked for. 
They come to our islands during the latter days of October—although their | 
arrival is very irregular; for occasionally Redwings come in the opening 
days of the month, yet in other seasons not a bird has arrived until the 
first week in November, the state of the season possibly influencing their 
movements. Redwings, like Song-Thrushes, perform their migrations 
under the cover of darkness. On the clear starlight nights of October 
their peculiar call-notes may be often heard as the birds flit across the sky 
above, invisible of course in the gloom. The Redwing’s early arrival on 
our shores, as compared with that of the Fieldfare, is attributable to two 
eauses. In the first place Redwings are more susceptible to cold than 
Fieldfares ; and, secondly, they are more exclusively insectivorous. At 
their arrival Redwings are exceedingly shy and wary; but after a 
few weeks this natural shyness of disposition is overcome, and they are 
t 
