Birds by Land and Sea 



On the first day of the frost bodies of lapwings 

 appeared in our fields, but by the following day 

 they had gone ; from which we inferred rightly that 

 the frost would continue. When the land is frost- 

 bound the lapwings swarm to the seashore. 



On the 1 6th November I came upon a small 

 band of fieldfares in the grass fields through which 

 the Mersey flows at Barlow Moor, but it was not 

 until the yth of the following month that I found 

 the redwing at Millington, some miles over the 

 Cheshire border. If these birds are able thus to 

 winter in the open with the home thrushes, and that 

 without applying for the relief which so often brings 

 the latter into our gardens, it is evident that there 

 are reasons other than those relating to food and 

 climate which take them back to the north precisely 

 at the time when the rigour of winter is abating. 

 In this, as in many other respects, birds are actuated 

 by motives which elude our reasonings. 



The redwing is said to return yearly to his old 

 haunt, which fact is borne out by my own observation, 

 in so far as I have never discovered it in my imme- 

 diate neighbourhood. The fieldfare, on the other 

 hand, is said to be a wanderer ; but I encounter 

 them in varying numbers almost daily in the same 

 fields in their season. 



The redwing resembles our song-thrush in size, 

 flight, and markings, but may easily be distinguished 

 from it by its full-coloured orange flanks and the 

 broad white stripe over the eye. The fieldfare has 



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