306* OBSER VA TIONS ON BIRDS. 



When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls 

 fare deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, 

 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 huteo 

 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 occasionally feed on insects; thu^ have I seen a tame 

 kite picking up the female ants full of eggs, with much 

 satisfaction. — White. 



That red-starts, fly-catchers, blackcaps 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 



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