OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



BIRDS IN GENERAL. 



IN severe weather, fieldfares, redwings, sky-larks, and tit-larks, resort 

 to watered meadows for food ; the latter wades up to its belly in pursuit 

 of the pupae of insects, and runs along upon the floating grass and 

 weeds. Many gnats are on the snow near the water, these support the 

 birds in part. 



Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour, for 

 though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they 

 seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of the 

 latter. 



Red-starts, fly-catchers, and black-caps, arrive early in April. If 

 these little delicate beings are birds of passage (as we have reason to 

 suppose they are, because they are never seen in winter), how could 

 they, feeble as they seem, bear up against such storms of snow and 

 rain, and make their way through such meteorous turbulences, as one 

 should suppose would embarrass and retard the most hardy and resolute 

 of the winged nation 1 ? Yet they keep their appointed times and 

 seasons; and in spite of frosts and winds return to their stations 

 periodically as if they had met with nothing to obstruct them. The 

 withdrawing and appearance of the short-winged summer birds is a 

 very puzzling circumstance in natural history. 



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 

 buteo apivorus sive vespivorus, or the honey buzzard, because some 

 eombs 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 



* See Letter XLIII. Mr. White is quite correct, it is for the larvae the combs 

 are sought after, we do not know any instance where honey is preyed upon. 

 Several hawks are partially insectivorous, particularly some of the small foreign 

 species. The kestrel of Europe sometimes feeds on coleoptera. 



