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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 district, 

 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 conclusion of wheat-sowing to the 

 season of barley and oats, it is not the case with us ; for 

 larks and chaffinches, and particularly linnets, flock and 

 congregate as much 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 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 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 

 extraordinary, since, to all appearance, the same food in 

 summer as well as in winter might support them here 

 which maintains 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 

 determines some species of birds with regard to their stay 

 or departure. Fieldfares and redwings disappear sooner or 

 later according as the warm weather comes on earlier or 

 later For I well remember, after that dreadful winter of 

 1739-40, that cold north-east winds continued to blow on 

 through April and May, and that these kinds of birds 

 (what few remained of them) did not depart as usual, but 

 were seen lingering about till the beginning of June. 



The best authority that we can have for the nidification 

 of the birds above-mentioned in any district, is the testi- 



