NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



149 



in the very dead of winter as when the husbandman is busy with 

 his ploughs and harrows. 



Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares 

 leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and to retire to 

 some districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That 

 the former pair before they retire, and that the hens are forward 

 with egg, I myself, when I was a sportsman, have often ex- 

 perienced. It cannot indeed be denied but that now and then we 

 hear of a woodcock's 

 nest, or young birds, 

 discovered in some part 

 or other of this island ; 

 but then they are all 

 always mentioned as 

 rarities, and somewhat 

 out of the common 

 course of things : l but 

 as to redwings and 

 fieldfares, no sportsman 

 or naturalist has ever 

 yet, that I could hear, 

 pretended to have found 

 the nest or young of 

 those species in any 

 part of these kingdoms. 

 And I the more admire 

 at this instance as extra- 

 ordinary, since, to all 

 appearance, the same food in summer as well as in winter might 

 support them here which maintains their congeners, the black- 

 birds and thrushes, did they choose to stay the summer through. 

 From hence it appears that it is not food alone which determines 

 some species of birds with regard to their stay or departure. 

 Fieldfares or redwings disappear sooner or later according as the 

 warm weather comes on earlier or later. For I well remember, 

 after that dreadful winter 1739-40, that cold north-east winds 

 continued to blow on through April and May, and that these 



WOODCOCK. 



