26o Common Wild Birds of the Scarborough District. 



on the refuse of fishermens' bait. 'As weak as a winnel ' (it's West Country 

 local name) is an old Somerset saying, and the bird seems to lack the 

 power of accommodating itself to circumstances and is quite unable to 

 dig out snails from a snowed up hedgerow as the Song Thrush can. When 

 the severe weather breaks, all the birds that have survived disappear, and 

 I have never known them to remain later than March igth. 



The Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris L.). The ' felfer ' and the 'blue-tail' 

 of the natives sometimes turns up in autumn as early as September 20th, 

 and sometimes remains in large or small chattering flocks until May loth, 

 when I once saw as many as a hundred together. They haunt the fields 

 in scattered flocks or feed on berries in woods and hedges, but like the 

 redwings they always seem to be aliens, and v^^e never know them as we do 

 our blackbirds and thrushes and that is why this is so short a paragraph. 



*The Blackbird {Turdus merula L.). Resident and abundant through- 

 out the year. In the autumn their numbers are greatly increased by 

 immigration, the new arrivals haunting low bushes on the sea cliffs for 

 some days before spreading inland. At such times cock birds seem to 

 predominate. Here the blackbird does not commence its spring song so 

 early as either the Song or Mistle-thrush. Only once have I heard it in 

 January and that was on the thirty-first of the month. But in April, 

 May and June, its rich voice is more noticeable than the throstles. The 

 song is sung with many pauses and in the slowest of bird time. It may be 

 heard in early summer from 2-15 a.m. till 9 p.m. It becomes silent by 

 about July 13th. 



The Blackbird's nest is usually placed low down in hedges, banks, 

 bushes and on tree trunks, sometimes quite on the level, though occasionally 

 as much as twenty-five feet above ground in a tree. Occasionally in 

 cow-sheds, often on a heap of sticks and sometimes stuffed into a tree 

 hole open to the sky. The materials used, most frequently grass, include 

 also green and dead herbage, roots, moss, straw, twigs, strips of bark, 

 fern, feathers, wool and paper, the nest walls being lined with mud. I 

 have not found eggs in the nest before April nth, nor after July 12th. 

 Usually only four eggs are laid — 63%, and in my experience never more 

 than five — 37%. Almost always characteristically speckled, on very 

 rare occasions I have found all four eggs in a nest practically spotless. 

 In weight they about equal those of the Song Thrush. One of the most 

 abnormally large wild bird's eggs that I have seen is a blackbird's, now 

 before me. Howard Saunders says: 'average measurements i-i by 

 •85 in. This egg, one of a clutch of five, measures 1-35 by i in., exactly 

 equal to the above-named author's average measurements for a magpie's 



egg- 

 As fond of worms as the Thrush is of snails, it is no friend of the gar- 

 dener in strawberry time. In autumn it may be seen feeding on rowan 

 and other wild berries, but in severe weather it is not dainty and will 

 pick undigested grain from horse-dung. That it hunts the ground very 

 closely may be proved by my finding one caught in a game-keeper's trap 

 set under stones for weazels, etc. 



The blackbird's alarm note is very aggressive, i.e., ' kick, kick, kick, 

 kick,' or ' chuck it, chuck it, chuck it,' and often betrays the presence of 

 an owl abroad in the daylight whilst at roosting time it makes more 

 noise than all the other birds in the wood put together. 



The Ring-Ousel [Turdus torquatus L.). Sparingly distributed over the 

 wilder parts of the moors this is not a common bird, even in its favoured 

 haunts here or indeed anywhere in Britain. Here it reaches the most 

 easterly portion of its range, but is confined to the North Riding portion 

 of our district. Its earliest recorded arrival in our neighbourhood is 

 April 8th, and it has been known to remain until October ist. The nest, 

 like the Blackbird's, but without the mud lining and consequently less 

 substantial, is usually placed in the bank of a stream or dry ditch well out 

 on the open moors, although I have found it in a rowan tree 10 feet up. 



Naturalist, 



