182 LINGERING BIRDS. 



the flights may be large, they become wild ; and the 

 flesh, assuming its darkness, manifests that their food 

 has not been farinaceous. The distant foreign migra- 

 tions, which have been stated to take place from the 

 meadows of the Severn, I believe to be only these in- 

 land trips ; and that the supposed migrators returned to 

 those stations fat and in good condition, owing to their 

 having fed during their absence on the nutricious berry 

 of the white thorn. I have several times seen the fruit 

 on our hedges refused by these birds, and this too in 

 no very temperate season ; but in all these cases, the 

 summer had been ungenial the berries had not ripen- 

 ed well, they were nipped by the frosts of October, and 

 hung on the sprays dark in color, small, and juiceless 

 in substance. The summer of 1825 produced the finest 

 and largest haws I ever remember. They were in gene- 

 ral of a bright red hue, and filled with farinaceous pulp ; 

 and in consequence, though the season was uncom- 

 monly mild and open, long before Christmas, little 

 wandering parties of these birds consumed the whole 

 of them. 



Perfectly gregarious as the fieldfare is, yet we ob- 

 serve every year, in some tall hedge-row, or little, 

 quiet pasture, two or three of them that have with- 

 drawn from the main flocks, and there associate with 

 the blackbird and the thrush. They do not appear to 

 be wounded birds, which from necessity have sought 

 concealment and quiet, but to have retired from in- 

 clination ; and I have reason to apprehend that these 

 retreats are occasionally made for the purpose of form- 

 ing nests, though they are afterwards abandoned with- 

 out incubation ; as I have now before me the egg of a 

 bird, which I believe to be that of a fieldfare, taken 

 from a nest somewhat like that formed by the song- 

 thrush, in 1824. Its color is uniform a rather pale 

 blue ; it is larger than that of the thrush, obtuse at both 

 ends, and unlike any egg produced by our known British 

 birds. These retiring birds linger with us late in the 

 season, after all the main flights are departed, as if re- 

 luctant to leave us ; but towards the middle or end of 



