OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS 



BIRDS IN GENERAL. In severe weather fieldfares, red- 

 wings, skylarks, and titlarks resort to watered meadows for 

 food ; the latter wades up to its belly in pursuit of the pupae 

 of insects, and runs along upon the floating grass and weeds. 

 Many gnats are on the snow near the water; these support the 

 birds in part. 



Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by color, 

 for though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, 

 yet they seldom touch the former till they have devoured every 

 bunch of the latter. 



Redstarts, fly-catchers, and blackcaps arrive early in April. 

 If these little delicate beings are birds of passage (as we have 

 reason to suppose they are, because they are never seen in 

 winter), how could they, feeble as they seem, bear up against 

 such storms of snow and rain, and make their way through 

 such meteorous turbulences, as one should suppose would 

 embarrass and retard the most hardy and resolute of the 

 winged nation ? Yet they keep their appointed times and 

 seasons ; and in spite of frosts and winds return to their sta- 

 tions periodically as if they had met with nothing to obstruct 

 them. The withdrawing and appearance of the short-winged 

 summer birds is a very puzzling circumstance in natural history. 



When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls fare 

 deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour 

 the young wasps in their maggot state with the highest glee 

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

 therefore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray 

 should call one species of buzzard buteo apivorus sive vespivo- 

 rus, or the honey buzzard, because some combs of wasps hap- 



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