ee THE BIEDS or OXFORDSHIRE. 



THE BLACKCAP. 



Sylvia atricapilla. 



The Blackcap is a common summer visitor, arriving in 

 April and remaining well on into September. It is a hardy 

 bird ; I have heard it singing actually during a snow- 

 storm on a bitterly cold morning in early May^ and the Rev. 

 A. Matthews has recorded the fact of a male having been seen, 

 apparently in good health, near Weston-on-the- Green on the 

 1st December, 1850, the weather then being very severe for 

 the season. 



The Blackcap is fond of breeding in gardens, where there is 

 shelter suitable to its somewhat retiring habits. At the end 

 of summer numbers come to fruit gardens to partake of the 

 remains of the currants and raspberries ; for it is one of the 

 fruit-eating warblers, and though feeding its yoimg, and 

 subsisting itself, on insects during the summer, it will on its 

 arrival in spring, when such food is scarce, eat ripe ivy 

 berries. 



The Blackcap is one of our finest song-birds, surpassed by 

 none save the Nightingale, and in one characteristic its song 

 is perhaps unrivalled. No one who has listened to its ' full, 

 sweet, deep, loud, and wild pipe,^ as White of Selborne most 

 aptly describes the song, should grudge the Blackcap his 

 reward of wasting fruit. 



THE WOOD-WREN. 



Phylloscopus sibilatrix. 

 The Wood- Wren, or -Warbler, is a smnmer visitor, but of 

 extremely local distribution. The Messrs. Matthews record 

 that a few specimens have been killed near Oxford, but they 

 only once met with it in the neighbourhood of Weston-on-the 

 Green. Mr. J. R. Earle has taken the nest of this species in 

 one or two instances near Oxford. In the north of the county 

 I have never heard its song, although in the oak woods on the 



