A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



pieces of white calico, a great many of which, 

 having been washed, were laid on a cropped 

 garden hedge to dry. A considerable number 

 were found to be missing, but the real thief 

 was not suspected until the pieces of calico 

 were discovered worked with a liberal mixture 

 of dry grass, roots and mud into a nest of a 

 missel-thrush in an adjoining orchard. 



The early-constructed nest of this bird, al- 

 ways in some naked tree or large bush, is seen 

 at once by every marauding magpie who hap- 

 pens to come that way, discovery and de- 

 struction are with him one and the same. 

 The magpie will perch on the side of the nest, 

 and despite the clamour of the thrush, deliber- 

 ately devour either eggs or young, or both. 



2. Song-Thrush. Turdus musicus, Linn. 

 Though well known everywhere, the song- 

 thrush is not generally suspected of being a 

 very great consumer of snails. Yet there is 

 no other bird which devours them wholesale 

 as this thrush does. At all seasons when these 

 gasteropods are obtainable the thrush smashes 

 their hard shell on a stone to get at the con- 

 tents, and being by no means a shy bird, espe- 

 cially where there are no guns, the breaking- 

 up process may be readily observed. The bird 

 takes the snail by the lip of the shell, and 

 raising itself up to its full height, brings it 

 down on the stone, and continues the process 

 until the shell is so much broken that the soft 

 mollusc can be extracted, it is then torn to 

 pieces and swallowed. Even the large garden 

 snail, He/ix aspersa, is not proof against the 

 smashing powers of the thrush, while the shells 

 of all the smaller banded snails are easily mani- 

 pulated. 



3. Redwing. Turdus iliacus, Linn. 

 Arriving in this country earlier in the win- 

 ter than the fieldfare, the appearance of the 

 redwing is not so easily noted on account of 

 its general resemblance to the song-thrush. Its 

 mode of flying will however readily distinguish 

 it. When put up it hurries off in a rapid and 

 twisting flight, taking an upward direction, 

 and very rarely near to the ground, as is ob- 

 servable with the song-thrush when disturbed. 

 Whether the redwing feeds in the winter on 

 anything more than hedge fruit and an occa- 

 sional insect I am not able to say, but it has 

 not been observed like the song-thrush and 

 blackbird to have recourse to a special diet, 

 nor yet to feed on turnips or other roots like 

 the fieldfare. 



4. Fieldfare. Turdus pilaris, Linn. 

 During very hard winters fieldfares suffer 



very severely, and even die of starvation after 



the fruit of the whitethorn has been consumed. 

 At such times they frequent fields of swede 

 turnips to feed, and attack the roots of that 

 plant, often doing considerable mischief, for 

 those roots which have been broken into by 

 the bird rot off towards the spring. I have 

 seen carrots, as well as turnips, which have 

 thus been damaged by fieldfares. 



[White's Thrush. Turdus varius, Pallas. 



Although this rare bird has not as yet been 

 met with in Worcestershire, one has been shot 

 at Welford in Gloucestershire, which lies on 

 a tongue of land running between the counties 

 of Warwick and Worcester, and so near the 

 boundary of the latter county that it may very 

 properly be mentioned here. The occurrence 

 was recorded by the present writer in one of 

 the early volumes of the Ibis.'] 



5. Blackbird. Turdus merula, \^'\nn. 

 Blackbirds, like song-thrushes, feed largely 



on snails, but instead of selecting the large 

 ones they take the very smallest and swallow 

 them whole. During the winter months the 

 blackbird turns over the dead leaves lying in 

 the bottom of woods, coppices, shrubberies and 

 hedgerows for the small molluscs or crustaceans 

 concealed beneath them, and if approached 

 cautiously when so engaged, may be seen 

 flinging the leaves alternately to the right 

 and left while eagerly prosecuting his search. 



6. Ring-Ousel. Turdus torquatus, Linn. 

 This bird is generally seen in Worcester- 

 shire as a passing visitor in the spring and 

 autumn, sometimes remaining for a week or 

 more on its journey. It was ' of unfrequent 

 occurrence ' when Sir Charles Hastings wrote 

 in 1834. Lees, 1870, records it as an 

 autumnal visitor only in the vicinity of Mal- 

 vern, but Mr. W. Edwards of that place 

 found a nest containing four eggs near there 

 in 1877. The berries of the mountain ash 

 appear to be a great attraction to it. 



7. Wheatear. Saxicola oenanthe (Linn.). 

 Two very distinct races of wheatears visit 



us in the spring and autumn, but so far as 

 I know, only temporarily : the one a small 

 variety, and the other materially larger and 

 more delicately coloured. Lees says that a 

 few wheatears frequent the Malvern Hills and 

 breed, but he gives no particulars, and indeed 

 does not appear to have recognized the two 

 varieties. The smaller wheatear is the less 

 common the earlier to arrive, and is never 

 seen except on the ground. The larger one 

 comes two or three weeks later, and often 

 alights on hedges, bushes, and even trees, flit- 

 ting from tree to tree along a hedgerow. I 



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