224 ^■^^ Hunting Wasps 



Wheat-ear, or White-tail, extolled by all who 

 are able to appreciate his exalted qualities. 

 No Beccafico of the Roman epicures, immor- 

 talized in Martial's epigrams, ever equalled 

 the exquisite, scented ball of fat that is the 

 Wheat-ear, grown shamefully stout on glut- 

 tonous living. He is an unbridled devourer 

 of every kind of insect. The notes which I 

 have taken as a sportsman and naturalist bear 

 witness to the contents of his gizzard. It 

 includes the whole little world of the fallow 

 fields : grubs and Weevils of every species, 

 Locusts, Tortoise-beetles, Golden Apple-beetles, 

 Crickets, Earwigs, Ants, Spiders, Wood-lice, 

 Snails, Millipedes, and ever so many others. 

 And, as a change from this full-flavoured diet, 

 there are grapes, blackberries and dogberries. 

 Such is the bill of fare for which the Wheat- 

 ear is ever in search, as he flies from clod to 

 clod, with the white feathers of his outspread 

 tail giving him that fictitious look of a Butterfly 

 on the wing. And Heaven knows what prodigies 

 of plumpness he is able to achieve. 



He has only one master in the art of self- 

 fattening. This is one whose migration syn- 

 chronizes with his, one who is likewise an 

 enthusiastic insect-eater : the Bush-pipit, as 

 the nomenclators so absurdly call him, whereas 

 the dullest of our shepherds never hesitates to 



