380 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest 

 cold of the hardest winters : at which season of the year, I 

 have had in my possession two- or three that were killed in 

 this neighbourhood in different years. MARKWICK. 



OWLS. Mr. "White has observed, p. 159, that the owl 

 returns to its young with food once in five minutes. Mr. 

 Montague has observed, that the wren returns once in two 

 minutes, or, upon an average, thirty-six times in an hour ; 

 and this continued full sixteen hours in a day, which, if 

 equally divided between eight young ones, each would receive 

 seventy-two feeds in the day, the whole amounting to five 

 hundred and seventy-six. See OrnitJiolog. Diet. p. 35. To 

 this I will add, that the swallow never fans to return to its 

 nest at the expiration of every second or third minute. 



MITFORD. 



CUCKOOS. Since Mr. White's time, much has been added 

 to our knowledge of the cuckoo, by the patient attention of 

 Dr. Jenner. Concerning the singing of the cuckoo, men- 

 tioned by Mr. White, at p. 140, I will add the following 

 curious memoranda from the 7th volume of the Transactions 

 of the Linncean Society. " The cuckoo begins early in the 

 season with the interval of a minor third, the bird then 

 proceeds to a major third, next to a fourth, then a fifth, 

 after which his voice breaks without attaining a minor 

 sixth." This curious circumstance was, however, observed 

 very long ago ; and it forms the subject of an epigram in 

 that scarce black-letter volume, the Epigrams of John 

 Heywood, 1587. MITFORD. 



