1 THE BIRDS OF DEYOX. 



harsh notes. All the Thrushes suffer much in hard 

 winters ; after the memorable one of 1880 there were 

 districts in which no Song-Thrush was heard in the 

 following spring. 



The British Thrushes are well represented in Devonshire. 

 On the edges of Dartmoor, in early autumn, six of them 

 may be seen in the course of a morning's walk. Thrushes, 

 Blackbirds, and Mistlc-Thrushes will be plentiful ; Field- 

 fares and lied wings will have just arrived, and one or two 

 late-staying lling-Ouzels will be met with in the hedges. 

 AMiite's Thrush, a rare straggler from Eastern Asia, has 

 also occurred on the borders of the moor. 



Mistle-Thrush. Turdus viscivorus, Linn. 

 [Holm Screech, Home Screech, Storm-Cock : Dev.'] 



Resident and common throughout the county. Ereeds. 



Although when Col. Montagu wrote his ' Ornithological Dictionary ' he 

 had to record that this bird was by no means plentiful in England, and 

 seemed to be less so in winter, it is now very common, and its increase 

 must be considered as one of the results of the extirjiation of raptorial 

 birds, and of the greater protection afforded to wild birds in the nesting- 

 season. The Mistle-Thrush begins to build at the end of March in the 

 south of the county. The various broods tlock together in July and 

 August, and in the latter month we have noticed the arrival of immigrants 

 from the north-east; but in the course of the autumn these flocks, which 

 are especially numerous on Dartmoor and other high moorlands, dis- 

 appear, evidently having left the county for the south. "While they 

 remain they are especially partial to land that has been burnt over. 



During the winter months the Mistle-Thrush is a solitary bird, taking 

 and keeping possession of some holly-bush, from which it drives off 

 every other species of bird. It is probably from this habit that it derives 

 its common Devonshire name of " Holm Sci'eech," as the holly is locally 

 called " Holm-tree," just as its more ordinary title in the English list is 

 taken from the mistletoe, a plant of rare occurrence in this county. 



In ISbo, and for some few years previouslv, the Mistle-Thrush was 

 very scarce near Plymouth (J. G., Zool. 1S85, p. TJIO), but it afterwards 

 became numerous again. As it can live on holly-berries, which seem 

 distasteful to other species of Thrush, and are only resorted to by them 

 when all else fails, it generally endures severe weather better than they 

 do, although in the cold spell at the end of 1800 it suffered severely and 

 numbers perished. 



osi 



