384 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



delight. Any insect-eating bird would do the same ; and there- 

 fore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray should call 

 one species of buzzard buteo apivorus sive vespivoms, or the honey 

 buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be found in 

 one of their nests. The combs were conveyed thither doubtless 

 for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, and not for their honey, 

 since none is to be found in the combs of wasps. Birds of 

 prey occasionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a tame kite 

 picking up the female ants full of eggs, with much satisfaction. 

 WHITE. 



That red-starts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender- 

 billed insectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, 

 make their first appearance very early in the spring, is a well- 

 known fact ; though the fly-catcher is the latest of them all in its 

 visit (as this accurate naturalist observes in another place), for it 

 is never seen before the month of May. If these delicate creatures 

 come to us from a distant country, they will probably be exposed 

 in their passage, as Mr. White justly remarks, to much greater 

 difficulties from storms and tempests than their feeble powers 

 appear to be able to surmount : on the other hand, if we suppose 

 them to pass the winter in a dormant state in this country, con- 

 cealed in caverns or other hiding-places sufficiently guarded from 

 the extreme cold of our winter to preserve their life, and that at 

 the approach of spring they revive from their torpid state and 

 reassume their usual powers of action, it will entirely remove the 

 first difficulty, arising from the storms and tempests they are 

 liable to meet with in their passage ; but how are we to get over 

 the still greater difficulty of their revivification from their torpid 

 state ? What degree of warmth in the temperature of the air is 

 necessary to produce that effect, and how it operates on the 

 functions of animal life, are questions not easily answered. 



How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named this species 

 the honey buzzard, because it fed on honey, when he not only 

 named it in Latin buteo apivorus et vespivorus, but expressly says 

 that "it feeds on insects, and brings up its young with the 

 maggots or nymphs of wasps "? 



