EATEN BY BIRDS. 265 



partly to a nutritive farinaceous food ; its flesh at 

 the time becoming bluish and clean. The upland 

 birds are in this state, from perhaps the end of 

 November till the end of January, according as the 

 hedge fruit has held out ; and at this period 

 they are comparatively tame : afterward, though 

 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 migrations, which have been stated to take 

 place from the meadows of the Severn, I believe to 

 be only these inland 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 

 ripened well, they were nipped by the frosts of 

 October, and hung on the sprays dark in colour, 

 small, and juiceless in substance. The summer of 

 1825 produced the finest and largest haws I ever 

 remember. They were in general of a bright red 

 hue, and filled with farinaceous pulp ; and in con- 

 sequence, though the season was uncommonly 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 



