SOME BIRD NOTES 227 



to the destruction of the whole crop by insects, which cannot 

 be kept off by ' scaring/ as birds can, during the time the 

 fruit is ripening ? " 



One keen observer of bird-life, and a large grower of 

 strawberries, resenting the imputation made by a contri- 

 butor to the correspondence, that the thrushes and black- 

 birds despoiled his cherry trees, remarked : 



" Song-thrushes will not eat cherries, and the blackbird's 

 weak nerves will not allow him to do much depredation. 

 Cherries are tackled, as a rule, by starlings, jays, and missel- 

 thrushes. We can all manage to keep birds from our fruit 

 if we wish without shooting them. If the missel-thrush 

 sneaks a few cherries, his beautiful song in the bleak days 

 of February will amply repay any but a tyrant for the little 

 damage done in the summer months. The song-thrush will 

 not hurt strawberries, and the wariness of the blackbird 

 stays his beak from prying into the interior of much fruit 

 . . . and just consider what good these birds do for us in 

 clearing away worse foes to the fruit, such as Snail, Slug, 

 Beetle and Co. * Bob ' redbreast and the whitethroat like 

 currants : the former takes some shooting to frighten ; he 

 and the other do good in clearing off countless caterpillars." 



Another correspondent, referring to the insect pest, stated 

 that he had sunk in the ground a number of large jam-jars, 

 containing lemon-water, and in this way caught beetles by 

 hundreds. 



Writing upon the food of birds of the thrush family, a 

 correspondent in the Field (November, 1906) stated : 



" I have more than once seen one of the large black slugs 

 (Arion ater) eaten by a thrush, once by a blackbird, and 

 once or twice by redwings ; whilst the first bird I ever 

 remember to have seen eating this not very inviting look- 

 ing creature was a rock-pipit, during a snowstorm, and I 

 watched it consume about half of the slug before I drove 

 it off to see what the heavy object was which it was drag- 

 ging about. ... I have frequently watched blackbirds and 

 thrushes eat the common little white field slug (Ltmax 

 agrestis] upon the lawn, and occasionally seen redwings and 

 fieldfares, but all of them seem to prefer worms and shell- 

 snails when they can get them." 



The crop of a redwing shot in February was found to 

 contain earwigs, spiders, the remains of beetles, and some 



