320 OBSERVATIONS ON 



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. 



Redstarts,, flycatchers, and blackcaps 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 

 hard}'- and resolute of the winged nation ? Yet they 

 keep their appointed times and seasons; and in spite of 

 frost and winds return to their stations periodically, as if 

 they had met with nothing to obstruct them. The with- 

 drawing and appearance of the short-winged summer birds 

 is a very puzzling circumstance in natural history ! l 



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 Suteo 

 apivorous sive vespivorous, 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 : thus have I seen a tame kite 

 picking up the female ants full of eggs with much satis- 

 faction. 



1 That redstarts, flycatchers, blackcaps, and other slender-billed in- 

 sectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, make their first 

 appearance very early in the spring, is a well-known fact; though the 

 flycatcher 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 White justly remarks, to much 

 greater difficulties from storms and tempests than their feeble powers 



