270 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



wasps. Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a 

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

 satisfaction. WHITE. 



That red-starts, fly-catchers, black-caps, 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 meet 

 with in their passage ; but how are we to get over the still greater diffi- 

 culty of their revivification from their torpid state ? What degree of 

 warmth in the temperature of the air is necessary to produce that effect, 

 and how it operates on the functions of animal life, are questions not 

 easily answered. 



How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named this species the 

 honey buzzard, because it fed on honey, when he not only named it 

 in Latin buteo apivorus et vespivorus, but expressly says that " it feeds 

 on insects, and brings up its young with the maggots or nymphs 

 of wasps'?" 



'That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, some- 

 times feed on insects I have little doubt, and I think I have observed 

 the common buzzard, falco buteo, to settle on the ground and pick up 

 insects of some kind or other. MAKKWICK. 



EOOKS. 



Eooks are continually fighting, and pulling each other's nests to 

 pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in such close 

 community. And yet if a pair offer to build on a single tree, the nest 

 is plundered and demolished at once. Some rooks roost on their nest 

 trees. The twigs which the rooks drop in building supply the poor 

 with brushwood to light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not 

 permitted to finish any nest till the rest have completed their building. 

 As soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and demolishes 

 the whole. As soon as rooks have finished their nests, and before they 

 lay, the cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a 

 fondling tremulous voice and fluttering wings, and all the little 

 blandishments that are expressed by the young, while in a helpless 

 state. This gallant deportment of the males is continued through the 



