OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



BIRDS IN GENERAL. 



IN severe weather fieldfares, red-wings, sky-larks, and tit-larks, 

 resort to watered meadows for food ; the latter wades up to its 

 belly in pursuit of the pupae of insects, and runs along upon the 

 floating grass and weeds. Many gnats are on the snow near the 

 water ; these support the birds in part. 



Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour, for 

 though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they 

 seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of 

 the latter. 



Red-starts, fly-catchers, and black-caps, arrive early in April. 

 If these little delicate beings are birds of passage (as we have 

 reason to suppose they are, because they are never seen in winter) 

 how could they, feeble as they seem, bear up against such storms 

 of snow and rain, and make their way through such meteorous 

 turbulences, as one should suppose would embarrass and retard 

 the most hardy and resolute of the winged nation ? Yet they 

 keep their appointed times and seasons ; and in spite of frosts and 

 winds return to their stations periodically, as if they had met with 

 nothing to obstruct them. The withdrawing and appearance of 

 the short-winged summer birds is a very puzzling circumstance in 

 natural history ! 



When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls fare 

 deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the 

 young wasps in their maggot state with the highest glee and de- 

 light. Any insect-eating bird would do the same ; and therefore 

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

 species of buzzard buteo apivorus sive vespivorus, or the honey-buz- 

 zard, 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 

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