AFFECTIONS OF BIRDS. 175 



assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines 

 of a village are up in arms at the sight of a 

 hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves 

 that district. A very exact observer has often 

 remarked that a pair of ravens, nesting in the 

 rock of Gibraltar, would suffer no vulture or eagle 

 to rest near their station, but would drive them 

 from the hill with an amazing fury: even the 

 blue thrush at the season of breeding, would 

 dart out from the clefts of the rock to chase away 

 the kestrel, or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand 

 near the nest of a bird that has young, she will 

 not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent 

 fondness, but will wait about at a distance, with 

 meat in her mouth, for an hour together. 



Should I farther corroborate what I have ad- 

 vanced above, by some anecdotes which I probably 

 may have mentioned before in conversation, yet 

 you will, I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake 

 of the illustration. 



The fly- catcher of the Zoology (the stoparola 

 of Ray *) builds every year in the vines that grow 

 on the walls of my house. A pair of these 

 little birds had one year inadvertently placed 

 their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady 

 time, not being aware of the inconvenience that 

 followed. But a hot sunny season coming on 

 before the brood was half fledged, the reflection 

 of the wall became insupportable, and must inevi- 

 tably have destroyed the tender young, had not 

 affection suggested an expedient, and prompted 

 the parent birds to hover over the nest all the 

 hotter hours, while, with wings expanded, and 

 mouths gaping for breath, they screened off the 

 heat from their suffering offspring. 



1 Muscicapa grisola. Linn. W. J. 



