POWER OF DIGESTION IN BIRDS. 



vine or the plum. Being perfectly harmless, and 

 hence never molested, they become 



(C Enamour'd with their ancient haunts, 

 . and hover round." 



I once knew a pair of these birds bring off two 

 broods in one season from the same nest. This 

 flycatcher delights in eminences. The naked spray 

 of a tree, or projecting stone in a building, or even 

 a tall stick in the very middle of the grass-plot, is 

 sure to attract its attention, as affording an unin- 

 terrupted view of its winged prey ; and from this 

 it will be in constant activity a whole summer's day, 

 capturing its food, and returning to swallow it. 

 The digestion of some birds must be remarkably 

 rapid, to enable them to receive such constant re- 

 plenishments of food. The swift and the swallow 

 are feeding from the earliest light in the morning 

 till the obscurity of evening ; the quantities of 

 cherries and raspberries that the blackcap and 

 pettichaps will eat are surprising, as they are unre- 

 mittingly consuming from morning till night ; and 

 this flycatcher seems to require a proportion of 

 food equal to any bird, being in constant progress, 

 capturing one moment, and resting the next. But 

 fruit and insects are with us only for a short season ; 

 and their privations, when these no longer afford a 

 supply, indicate, that they possess the power of 

 abstinence, as well as that of consumption. 



We observed this summer two common thrushes 



P 2 



