Zoological Notices, by James Small. 101 



same season at Muirieston, near Mid Calder. A number of our 

 song birds in the Borders give short broken notes, and these only 

 in autumn. I have, in a mild winter, heard the Misselthrush sing- 

 ir>g near the end of December, on the sheltered banks at Pinnacle- 

 hill. I heard the Misselthrush sing on the afternoon of the first 

 of January, 1876, at Lowood, near Galashiels: The day was sunny 

 and mild ; and I never previously heard this bird sing in this 

 locality before the first of February. 



Tame Redbreast. — I have a tame Robin, which came in by a 

 window, a little more than two years ago. He went off for the 

 first summer after he came to us, and returned in December, 

 1875. We have many birds in the room in which he lives ; and 

 whenever he came back his cage was hung in its old place, and 

 Robin went into it at once and began to feed ; and he immediately 

 after feeding made the round of all the cages, and had a bit of a 

 bicker with some of the inmates, most of them old friends. Last 

 summer he was allowed to go off again ; but after flying out at 

 the window he looked around, and very soon flew into the house 

 by another window, and was soon in his old quarters. It may 

 not prove amiss to state that for two Christmases we had this 

 bird, a live Robin, sitting and sleeping on our Christmas tree. 

 He sings freely, but not in his cage. 



Food of Rooks. — Until recent years, naturalists and writers on 

 Ornithology nearly all gave somewhat careless, and therefore in- 

 accurate accounts, as to the food on which these birds subsist. 

 The Rook is by some placed as a purely granivorous bird, by 

 others as purely insectivorous, and by many it is characterised as 

 a feeder on both grain and insects. The term omnivorous is, in 

 my opinion, the most accurate that can be applied, for the Rook 

 will devour almost anything edible. It is fondest, however, of 

 insect and fleshy food. In late and frosty spring weather, when 

 slugs and worms remain in shelter, the Rook hunts up the eggs 

 of game birds, and even at times has been seen to carry them to 

 the rookery — for its young doubtless. The Rook is also occasion- 

 ally a bird of prey ; and it is just as fond of carrion as the 

 " blackneb." Of late, it has (in the district in which I live, at 

 least), taken to eating turnips in time of frost in winter ; and in 

 the early spring it eats them, whether the weather be frosty or 

 not. I have, on several farms, seen large quantities of turnips 

 broken and greatly injured by rooks. They eat the green-top 



