194 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



immigrant Mistletoe-Thrushes (increasing numbers of which 

 annually arrive every autumn) have taken their departure. Old 

 cock Blackbirds begin to swarm in coast hedgerows, and in fact 

 in every tall rough fence and coppice for miles inland, till we are 

 amazed at their astonishing plenty and the facilities offered for 

 the " four-and-twenty Blackbirds all baked in a pie." These 

 Blackbirds, also the Thrushes which move later, do not appear 

 to congregate into flocks on departing, but gradually thin off and 

 disappear from their temporary retreats as the spirit moves 

 them. This, however, is not the case with the northern Thrushes 

 —Fieldfares and Redwings. Both are gregarious, and the former 

 pre-eminently so ; for days before setting off, Fieldfares sit in 

 great flights in the middle of pastures, or crowd the summits of 

 lofty trees within sound of the surf. Wild by nature and noisy 

 to a degree, their harsh "yack-chuck-chuck" is about the most 

 familiar of the bird sounds in the marshes. This mild winter 

 has been very favourable for them with the abundant crop of 

 hips and haws, yet with all this abundance neither young nor old 

 have forgot the track of the Norway wind and the path to the 

 summer home. Their going out is a long and protracted busi- 

 ness, often not completed, although it begins early, before the 

 middle or end of May. Redwings— most plentiful during this 

 winter— are in a degree less gregarious, but they have much the 

 same habits as their congeners, and leave at the same period as 

 do the emigrating Thrushes (T. musicus), and they make a much 

 more rapid and complete work of it than the Fieldfares, for we 

 shall not find a Redwing after March, or middle of April at the 

 latest, in the park-lands, paddocks, or meadows bordering the 

 streams, where they have been hopping all the winter. 



It is remarkable, considering the millions of Larks which for 

 weeks and months pour on to the east coast in autumn from 

 early in August to Christmas, so little is known of their emigra- 

 tion. Such, however, is the case; they succeed in slipping 

 off quietly and unobserved, and probably, as in autumn, in 

 straggling companies, and at night. Larks, however, do not 

 always adopt open order on their migrations, and I have known 

 them, under certain meteorological conditions, approach the 

 coast in densely packed flocks like clouds, and hundreds of yards 

 in extent. 



