286 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



devour the young wasps in their maggot state, with the 

 highest glee and delight. 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-buzzard, 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 none is 

 to be found in the combs of wasps. Birds of prey occasion- 

 ally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a tame kite picking up 

 the female ants full of eggs, with much satisfaction.* 



* That redstarts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender-billed 

 insectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, make their first 

 appearance very early in the spring, is a well known fact ; though the 

 fly-catcher is the latest of them all in its visit, (as this accurate naturalist 

 observes in another place,) for it is never seen before the month of May. 

 If these delicate creatures come to us from a distant country, they will 

 probably be exposed in their passage, as Mr White justly remarks, to much 

 greater difficulties from storms and tempests, than their feeble powers 

 appear to be able to surmount : * on the other hand, if we suppose them 

 to pass the winter in a dormant state, in this country, concealed in caverns, 

 or other hiding places, sufficiently guarded from the extreme cold of our 

 winter, to preserve their life, and that, at the approach of spring, they 

 revive from their torpid state, and reassume their usual powers of action, 

 it will entirely remove the first difficulty, arising from the storms and 

 tempests they are liable to meet with in their passage ; but how are we 

 to get over the still greater difficulty of their revivification from their 

 torpid state ? What degree of warmth in the temperature of the air is 

 necessary to produce that effect, and how it operates on the functions of 

 animal life, are questions not easily answered. 



How could Mr White suppose that Ray named this species the honey- 

 buzzard, because it fed on honey, when he not only named it in Latin, 

 buteo apivorus et vespivorus, but expressly says, that " it feeds on 

 insects, and brings up its young with the maggots, or nymphs of 

 wasps. " 



That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, sometimes 

 feed on insects, I have little doubt, and think I have observed the common 

 buzzard, (falco buteo, ) to settle on the ground, and pick up insects of 

 some kind or other MARK WICK. 



Our author seems sceptical to the last regarding the migration of 

 birds generally, and especially the short-winged tribes. The following 

 observations were made by Mr Andrew Bloxam, of Glenfield, near 

 Leicester, in a voyage from England to South America, in the years 



* M. Neumann has recorded a very extraordinary fact, of a fine specimen of the little 

 thrush, turdus minor of Bonaparte, being taken, on the 22d December, 1825, in a wood near 

 Kleinzererbst, in the Duchy of Anhalt-Ccethen, Germany. It would be difficult to account 

 for the appearance of this bird, supposed to be exclusively found in North America, a* it 

 exhibited no marks of confinement. ED. 



