6 THE FIELDFARE 
distinguish it from its ally the Blackbird, the Fieldfare is known 
by the name of Bluebird, to distinguish it from both. It is a 
migratory bird, spending its summer, and breeding, in the north 
of Europe, and paying us an annual visit in October or November. 
But it is impatient of cold, even with us, for in winters of unusual 
severity it migrates yet farther south, and drops in upon our mea- 
dows a second time in the spring, when on its way to its summer 
quarters. Fieldfares are eminently gregarious; not only do they 
arrive at ourshores and depart from them in flocks, but they keep 
together as long as they remain, nor do they dissolve their society 
on their return to the north, but build their nests many together 
in the same wood. In this country, they are wild and cautious 
birds, resorting during open weather to watercourses and damp 
pastures, where they feed on worms and insects, and when frost 
sets in betaking themselves to bushes in quest of haws and other 
berries; or in very severe weather resorting to the muddy or 
sandy sea-shore. They frequent also commons on which the 
Juniper abounds, the berries of this shrub affording them an abun- 
dant banquet. Unlike the Blackbird and Thrush, they rarely 
seek for food under hedges, but keep near the middle of fields, as 
if afraid of being molested by some concealed enemy. When 
alarmed, they either take refuge in the branches of a high tree in 
the neighbourhood, or remove altogether to a distant field. The 
song of the Fieldfare I have never heard : Toussenel doubts whether 
it has any; Yarrell describes it as ‘soft and melodious’; Bech- 
stein as ‘a mere harsh disagreeable warble’; while a writer in 
the Zoologist who heard one sing during the mild January of 
1846, in Devon, describes it as ‘ combining the melodious whistle 
of the Blackbird with the powerful voice of the Mistle Thrush’. 
Its call-note is short and harsh, and has in France given it the 
provincial names of Tia-tia and Tchatcha. This latter name 
accords with Macgillivray’s mode of spelling its note, yack chuck, 
harsh enough, no one will deny. ‘Our attention was attracted 
by the harsh cries of several birds which we at first supposed must 
be Shrikes, but which afterwards proved to be Fieldfares. We 
were now delighted by the discovery of several of their nests, and 
were surprised to find them (so contrary to the habits of other 
species of the genus with which we are acquainted) breeding in 
society. Their nests were at various heights from the ground, 
from four to thirty or forty feet or upwards; they were, for the 
most part, placed against the trunk of the Spruce Fir ; some were, 
however, at a considerable distance from it, upon the upper sur- 
face and towards the smaller end of the thicker branches: they 
resembled most nearly those of the Ring Ouzel; the outside is 
composed of sticks and coarse grass and weeds gathered wet, 
matted with a small quantity of clay, and lined with a thick bed 
of fine dry grass: none of them yet contained more than three 
