380 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



fore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray should call 

 one species of buzzard buteo apivorus sive vespivorus, or the honey 

 buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be found in 

 one of their nests. The combs were conveyed thither doubtless 

 for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, and not for their honey, 

 since none is to be found in the combs of wasps. Birds of prey 

 occasionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a tame kite picking 

 up the female ants full of eggs, with much satisfaction. WHITE. 



That red-starts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender-billed 

 insectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, make their 

 first appearance very early in the spring, is a well-known fact ; 

 though the fly-catcher is the latest of them all in its visit (as this 

 accurate naturalist observes in another place), for it is never seen 

 before the month of May. If these delicate creatures come to 

 us from a distant country, they will probably be exposed in their 

 passage, as Mr. White justly remarks, to much greater difficulties 

 from storms and tempests than their feeble powers appear to be 

 able to surmount : on the other hand, if we suppose them to pass 

 the winter in a dormant state in this country, concealed in caverns 

 or other hiding-places sufficiently guarded from the extreme cold 

 of our winter to preserve their life, and that at the approach of 

 spring they revive from their torpid state and reassume their usual 

 powers of action, it will entirely remove the first difficulty, arising 

 from the storms and tempests they are liable to meet with in their 

 passage ; but how are we to get over the still greater difficulty of 

 their revivification from their torpid state? What degree of 

 warmth in the temperature of the air is necessary to produce that 

 effect, and how it operates on the functions of animal life, are 

 questions not easily answered. 



How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named this species the 

 honey buzzard, because it fed on honey, when he not only named 

 it in Latin buteo apivorus et vespivorus, but expressly says that " it 

 feeds on insects, and brings up its young with the maggots or 

 nymphs of wasps ? " 



That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, 

 sometimes feed on insects I have little doubt, and I think I have 

 observed the common buzzard, falco buteo, to settle on the ground 

 and pick up insects of some kind or other. MARKWICK. 



