MISSEL-THRUSH RING-DOVE CROPS. 175 



that period, many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds 

 of prey, as may be seen by their feathers left in lanes and 

 under hedges. 



The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, 

 driving such birds as approach its nest, with great fury, to a 

 distance. The Welsh call it pen y llwyn, the head, or master 

 of the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to 

 enter the garden where he haunts ; and is, for the time, a good 

 guard to the new-sown legumens. In general, he is very suc- 

 cessful in the defence of his family : but once I observed in my 

 garden, that several magpies came determined to storm the 

 nest of a missel-thrush ; the dams defended their mansion with 

 great vigour, and fought resolutely pro arts etfocis; but num- 

 bers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swal- 

 lowed the young alive.* 



In the season of nidification, the wildest birds are compara- 

 tively tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though 

 they are continually frequented ; ) and the missel-thrush, 

 though most shy and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in 

 my garden, close to a walk where people are passing all day 

 long. 



Wall-fruit abounds with me this year ; but my grapes, that 

 used to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond 

 all precedent : and this is not the worst of the story ; for the 

 same ungenial weather, the same black cold solstice, has 

 injured the more necessary fruits of the earth, and discoloured 

 and blighted our wheat. The crop of hops promises to be 

 very large. 



Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half 



* No kind of animal food is despised by this carnivorous depredator. 

 Young lambs, poultry, eggs, fish, carrion, insects, and fruit, all come 

 within the range of his voracious appetite. He is a great enemy to 

 all young birds ; and, in many places, commits extensive ravages on the 

 brood and eggs of game. In various places of England and Ireland, a 

 reward is given for their heads, at the quarter sessions. The jay is 

 another beautiful bird ; but, like his congener, the magpie, is a most 

 destructive knave amongst smaller birds and their eggs. ED. 



f- During our residence in Fife, a pair of ring-doves incubated in a 

 larch tree, close to a walk in the garden, and not more than twenty-five 

 yards from the house, although this walk was frequented many times 

 during the day, and there brought up a brood. These young doves built 

 in a tree not far distant from the others. The old birds returned in the 

 following summer, and continued to breed there every season while I 

 remained ; as did also part of their progeny, for we had three nests within 

 the flower garden alone, which was next to the house, and without any 

 wall or hedge intervening ED. 



