WOODCOCKS FIELDFARES. 139 



quite acquiesce with you in one circumstance, when 

 you advance, that, " When they have thus feasted, 

 they again separate into small parties of five or six, 

 and get the best fare they can within a certain dis- 

 trict, having no inducement to go in quest of fresh- 

 turned earth." Now, if you mean that the business 

 of congregating is quite at an end from the conclu- 

 sion of wheat- so wing, to the season of barley and 

 oats, it is not the case with us ; for larks and chaf- 

 finches, and particularly linnets, flock and congregate 

 as much in the very dead of winter as when the hus- 

 bandman 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 experienced. 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 always mentioned as 

 rarities, and somewhat out of the common course of 

 things ; but as to redwings and fieldfares, no sports- 

 man 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 extraordinary, since, 

 to all appearance, the same food, in summer as well 

 as in winter, might support them here which main- 

 tains their congeners, the blackbirds and thrushes, 

 did they choose to stay the summer through. From 

 hence it appears, that it is not food alone which de- 

 termines some species of birds with regard to their 

 stay or departure. Fieldfares and redwings disap- 

 pear sooner or later, according as the warm weather 

 comes on earlier or later ; for I well remember, after 



