22 THE THRUSH AND ITS AFFINITIES. 



try, flies swifter than a black-bird, and uses the same 

 food. 



The field-fare and the red-wing make but a short stay 

 in this country. With us they are insipid, tuneless birds, 

 flying in flocks, and excessively watchful to preserve the 

 general safety. All their season of music and pleasure is 

 employed in the more northern climates, where they sing 

 most delightfully, perched among the forests of maples, 

 with which those countries abound. They build .their 

 nests in hedges ; and lay six bluish-green eggs, spotted 

 with black. 



The stare, distinguishable from the rest of this tribe by 

 the glossy green o its feathers in some lights, and the pur- 

 ple in others, breeds in hollow trees, eaves of houses r 

 towers, ruins, cliffs, and often in high rocks over the sea. 

 It lays four or five eggs of a pale greenish ash-color, and 

 makes its nest of straw, small fibres of roots, and such like. 

 Its voice is rougher than the rest of this kind ; but what it 

 wants in the melody of its note, it compensates by the fa- 

 cility with which it is taught to speak. In winter these 

 birds assemble in vast flocks, and feed upon worms and 

 insects. At the approach of spring they assemble in fields? 

 as if in consultation together, and for three or four days 

 seem to take no nourishment : the greater part leave the 

 country ; the rest breed here, and bring up their young. 



To this tribe might be added above a hundred other 

 birds of nearly the Thrush size, and living like them 

 upon fruit and berries. Words could not afford variety 

 enough to describe all the beautiful tints that adorn the 

 foreign birds of the Thrush kind. The brilliant green of 

 the emerald, the flaming red of the ruby, the purple of the 

 amethyst, or the bright blue of the sapphire, could not, by 

 the most artful combination, show anything sotruely lively 

 or delightful to the sight, as the feathers of the chilcoqui or 

 the tautotal. Passing, therefore, over these beautiful, but 

 little-known birds, I will only mention the American mock- 



