DO NATURAL HISTORY 



The redstart begins to sing : its note is short and im- 

 perfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. 



The willow wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests 

 in a garden, destroying the pease, cherries, currants, 

 &c. 3 ; and are so tame that a gun will not scare them. 



3 This sentence has probably been the cause of the murder of numbers 

 of these most innocent little birds, which are in truth peculiarly the 

 gardener's friends. My garden men were in the habit of catching the 

 hens on their nests in the strawberry beds, and killing them, under 

 the impression that they made great ravage among the cherries ; yet 

 I can assert that they never taste the fruit, nor can those which are 

 reared from the nest in confinement be induced to touch it. They peck 

 the Aphides which are injurious to the fruit trees, and being very pugna- 

 cious little birds, I have sometimes seen them take post in a cherry tree 

 and drive away every bird that attempted to enter it, though of greater 

 size and strength. 



The birds which are mistaken for them are the young of the garden 

 warbler, Curruca hortensis, BECHST. with which Mr. White was not 

 acquainted, as it is not mentioned by him, and does not appear in his list 

 of summer birds: yet I am confident that they will be found plentifully 

 at Selborne, when the Kentish cherries are ripe. They attacked my 

 cherries in great numbers when I lived in the south of Berkshire, not 

 much more than twenty miles from Selborne. These young birds have a 

 strong tinge of yellow on the sides, which disappears after the moult, and 

 gives them very much the appearance of the yellow wren when seen upon 

 the tree, though they are larger and stouter, and in habits very much 

 resemble the blackcaps, with whom they are associated in the plunder of 

 cherry trees. I have never seen the pettychaps in Yorkshire until the 

 cherries are ripe, when they immediately make their appearance and 

 attack the Kentish cherry particularly, being so greedy that I have often 

 taken them with a fishing rod tipped with birdlime while they were 

 pulling at the fruit. The moment they have finished the last Kentish 

 cherry they disappear for the season. If they finish the cherries in the 

 morning, they are gone before noon. I am persuaded that they appear 

 and disappear in the same manner at Selborne, and are probably to 

 be found there only while the cherries are ripe, which accounts for 

 Mr- White's having mistaken them for yellow wrens when he saw them 

 in the fruit trees. They breed in the market gardens about London, 

 and I imagine that as the cherries ripen they migrate from garden to 

 garden in pursuit of them. I am told that near London they remain late 

 enough to attack the elder berries, of which the fruit-eating warblers are 

 very fond, but in Yorkshire they do not even wait for the later cherries. 

 The number of these visitants depends upon the crop of early cherries. 

 This year the crop having nearly failed, I saw but two of them, which 

 appeared on the 15th of July and were not seen after the 17th. The 

 blackcap remains eating the currants and honeysuckle berries; they are 



