244 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



In the keeper's list there is no mention made 

 of the weasel, a species of vermin in which Hamp- 

 shire abounds ; — they may be included in the list 

 of stoats. I am not inclined to reckon the wood- 

 pecker as " vermin," because, like the mole, he only 

 haunts the rotten tree for food and nesting, as the 

 mole does the land for insects, which, but for him, 

 would devastate the crop. The tomtit, that garden- 

 ers pronounce to be so destructive to the bud, eats 

 not the bud, but only takes off the bloom to get at the 

 insect who had already commenced destruction. His 

 beak points to the fact that he only feeds on insects : 

 not so the finch tribe, they will eat the bud. How- 

 ever, let my readers take my advice, and never give 

 the gardener a gun to shoot at the alleged enemies, 

 imaginary or real, for where the bird picks off one 

 bud, the gardener, in his sport, shoots off and bruises 

 or destroys whole boughs, and is by far the greatest 

 bore of the two. Nothing can be more curious nor 

 better defined as to the food of the soft and hard- 

 billed birds, than the fact elicited by changing the 

 eggs in the nest, and controverting the mothers. 

 The food of the soft-beaked birds, such as robins, 

 hedge-sparrows, wrens, starlings, thrushes, and black- 

 birds, will suit each other; and a wren will rear 

 a thrush or the thrush the wren so far as feeding 

 goes ; and the same with the starling, with this only 

 difference, that as the wren and the starling are bred 

 in the one instance in a hole, and in the other in a nest 

 so peculiarly constructed that the young bird can't 

 fall out, if their eggs are hatched in an open nest, the 

 young, having no instinctive care for their safety in 

 that position^ are sure to tumble out. I have through 

 a change of eggs, seen wrens bring up a young thrush 



