306 OBSEETATIONS ON BIEDS. 



of the short-winged summer birds is a very puzzling circum- 

 stance in natural liistory ! 



Wlien 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 dehght. Any insect-eating bird would do 

 the same ; and therefore I have often wondered that the 

 accurate Mr. Eay should call one species of buzzard luteo 

 apivorus sive vespivorus, or the Jioney-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 occar 

 sionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a tame kite 

 picking up the female ants fall of eggs, with much satis- 

 faction. "White. 



That redstarts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender- 

 bOled 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 passages, as Mj. 

 White justly remarks, to much greater difhculties from 

 storms and tempests than their feeble powers appear to be 

 able to surmount : f on the other hand, if we suppose them 



* Those who have read that pleasing and instructive work, " The Ornitho- 

 logical Ramhles in Sussex," will find an interesting mention of the kestrel 

 flying along the surface of fields and feeding on grasshoppers, and probably 

 other insects. — Ed. 



f There certainly does exist a difficulty in conceiving how some of the 

 birds of passage, such feeble and bad fliers, should be able to migi-ate to such 

 a vast distance ; but some of our wonder will perhaps diminish when we read 

 the account of the manner in which the quail crosses the Mediterranean, for 

 the coast of Africa. " Towards the end of September the quails avail them- 

 selves of a northerly wind to take their departure from Europe, and flapping 

 one wing, while they present the otiier to the gale, half sail, half oar, they 

 graze the billows of the Mediterranean with their fattened rumps, and bury 

 themselves in the sands of Africa, that they may serve as food to the famished 

 inhabitants of Zara." — St. Pierre's Studies of Nature, vol. i. p. 91. — 



MlTFORD. 



