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 our shores and depart from them in if ocks, 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 



