Birds. 3387 



They have continued with little intermission ever since, a pretty sure sign that no se- 

 vere frost is very near. 



" Sing on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough ; 

 Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain : 

 See, aged winter, 'mid his surly reign, 



At thy blithe carol clears his furrow'd brow." — Burns. 

 On the 8th, 9th, and 10th of December, I heard the plaintive carol of the missel- 

 thrush, and only once afterwards, about the 20th. That cormorant of the fruit-gar- 

 den, the blackbird, seldom begins his song here much before the middle of April. I 

 remember, when a boy, taking a blackbird's nest ; the old birds followed me with their 

 "pink, pink," in great distress; in a few minutes the cock went, as if for the last time, 

 to the spot where the nest had been, he then darted up to the top of a tree, and com- 

 menced a beautiful dirge for the loss of his young. His sweet notes made me bitterly 

 repent the robbery I had committed ; I never heard a bird sing so beautifully. A cor- 

 respondent in the 'Zoologist' for 1844, mentions the curious superstition in Scotland 

 about the yellow-hammer (which is quite true), and that this poor innocent bird has to 

 do with the " de'il." His unmeaning song is twisted thus : — 

 " Teedle eedle eedle eedle ye, 

 De'il take you and not take me." 

 I am of opinion that birds sometimes mistake moonlight for dawn. Several times 

 about the end of May and beginning of June, I have heard the cuckoo at midnight, 

 in my shrubberies, within fifty yards of my house; and, at the same time, that pretty 

 lively songster the black-cap. It has a pleasing effect when the listener is in bed. 

 The song of the nightingale is very short. In cold ungenial weather this bird never 

 sings out well. In the winterly months of May, 1837 aud 1838, they sang scarcely at 

 all, and I never heard them after the 15th of June, but they have been partially heard 

 until the first week in July : the majority cease singing out about the 10th of June, 

 after the hatching of their young. In travelling in France, by diligence, the convey- 

 ance stopped near a wood, and I believe I heard fifty of these birds singing within 200 

 or 300 yards of the post-house : the effect was beautiful ! The great variety of song 

 among the numerous choristers of the grove, is quite charming, both by day and night, 

 in May and June; and to me even the cooing of the wood-pigeon is a pleasing 

 sound. A nocturnal friend visits me often, not quite so pleasing as the nightingale, 

 indeed, and generally in the winter nights, to wit, a fine white owl. I often wonder, 

 when his wild " whoo," " whoo," meets my ears, how he can subsist in severe weather 

 at all ! Byron does not let the song of birds pass unnoticed : — 



" Sweet the song of birds, 



The lisp of children, and their earliest words." 

 A heart-stirring simile no doubt ! I fear I have tired some of your readers with my 

 long yarn. At present no flower but the snow-drop appears, " nursed in the storm " 

 and " cradled in the winds ;" but we must soon look forward to a full chorus of song- 

 sters with the lengthening days and opening flowers. Indeed, whilst I am writing, 

 with the thermometer at 52 in the shade, there is a full chorus of song- thrushes, with 

 the hedge-sparrow, the cole titmouse, the lively little wren and the chaffinch. — H. W. 

 Newman ; New House, Stroud, February 3, 1852. 



Occurrence of the Common Buzzard (Buteo vulgaris) at Brede, Sussex. — I recently 

 obtained two specimens of this bird, which were trapped at Brede in the beginning of 

 the present month. It is so scarce now, that I do not know of more than a dozen spe- 



