THE BLACKBIRD 247 



In February our English Blackbird will be thinking 

 of mating. We are all familiar with the usual nesting- 

 site which is chosen evergreen, thick bushes, and 

 hedgerows but it has been known to build successfully 

 and to lay its eggs, in the heart of what is known as the 

 thousand-headed cabbage. The young of the early 

 broods sometimes help the parents to feed the young of 

 the second brood of the season. 



The Blackbird is commoner in the South than the 

 Thrush, and is as a rule more popular with the country 

 people than the latter bird. Gardeners look upon it as 

 a terrible thief, but the good it does in feeding on moths, 

 beetles, other insects and larvae, caterpillars, cockchafer 

 grubs, quite counterbalances the harm it does in taking 

 fruit. A well-known Zoologist says, " Short-sighted 

 agriculturists kill the Blackbirds that, at the rate of sixty 

 an hour, destroy their worst foes, or working as they do 

 from early dawn to dusk six hundred in the course of a 

 single day, which, given ten Blackbirds, raises the total 

 of vermin put out of the way to six thousand per diem, 

 against which a few dozens of strawberries should count 

 as the dust in the balance. But the horticulturist sees 

 the Blackbirds pick a raspberry now and again, and he 

 does not see the same bird kill a dozen or two of grubs 

 or snails for each morsel of fruit he may help himself 

 to." Another, a Fruit-grower, says that during one 

 hard winter when some of his fruit trees were killed, 

 and in some places the Thrush tribe were all but 

 annihilated, snails were a scourge in the following 

 summer, and gooseberry bushes were stripped by cater- 

 pillars innumerable. This is the testimony of the late 

 Joseph Witherspoon, a well-known fruit grower. He 

 goes on to say, " When gardens are surrounded by 



