TURDUS PILARIS. 249 



The Fieldfare, or Chestnut-Backed Thrush. 



(Merula Pilaris, or Turdus Pilaris). Linn. 



The fieldfare comes to us for food, 



But not to rear her callow brood, 



For, when the fields are clothed with snow, 



She has the look of feathered woe. 



It is a polar migrant, arriving in November, sometimes along 

 with the redwing. It is amongst the latest of onr winter 

 visitors, and only comes when ice and snow drive it from 

 Scandinavia. As it is late in coming, it is late in leaving — 

 about the end of April. It does not breed with us, although 

 many of our native thrushes are sitting on eggs before it leaves. 

 It is smaller than the missel thrush, 10 J inches long, and 17£ 

 in extent of wings. It is similar in colour, except the back and 

 wing coverts, which are chestnut. The bill is orange at the 

 base, tip black, legs and feet dark brown, iris brown. Like the 

 rest of the thrushes it feeds on slugs, snails, insects, and worms, 

 frequenting pastures, meadows, and all fields for its food or 

 fare, from which it derives its name of fieldfare, or field flyer — 

 in my young days called the feltyfare. It is a genuine Jield- 

 farer, as the mouse is a bam-famr, and the rat a sewer-farer. 

 It even roosts on the fields as well as low bushes. White, of 

 Selborne, says — 



" Though it sits on trees in the daytime, and procures the greatest part 

 of its food from white thorn hedges, yea, moreover, builds on very high 

 trees, yet always appears with us to roost on the ground. They come in 

 flocks just before it is dark, and settle and nestle among the heath on our 

 forest. And, besides, the larkers in dragging their nets by night 

 frequently catch them in the wheat stubbles, while the bat-fowlers, who 

 take many redwings in the hedges, never entangle any fieldfares. Why 

 these birds in the matter of roosting should differ from all their congeners, 

 and from themselves by day, is a fact for which I am unable to account." 



When the fields are covered with snow it resorts to hedges 

 and plantations to feed on haws, doghips, yew-tree berries, and 

 arum roots, or what it can get to sustain life. In severe 

 winters, when John Frost and his old friend Snow had 

 possession of the fields, I have been grieved to see them 

 amongst the rocks and on the sea-shore scarcely able to fly, 

 woefully searching for food, while lordly Humanity — in the 



