156 BRITISH AND EUROPEAN BIRDS. 



While other birds joined in a jig or a reel, 

 The Goatsucker humm'd with his loud spinning 

 wheel.* 



Gisborne thus describes this bird : 



" From bough to bough the restless magpie roves, 

 And chatters as he flies." 



Walks in a Forest. — Spring. 



The magpie is not, I believe, generally considered a very 

 pugnacious bird ; upon some occasions, however, it will exert 

 its energies : my friend, the Poet Laureate, informs me, 

 that since his residence in Cumberland, he saw in that part of 

 the country three magpies give battle to a Hawk, (the Falco 

 Tinnunculus, I presume,) and beat him. 



The Graculus, Red Legged Crow, Cornish-daw, Cornwall' 

 kee, Killigrew, or Cornish Chough, inhabits the Alps, Norway, 

 England, Egypt, and Persia ; it is violet-blackish ; bill and 

 legs red; sixteen inches long; it is restless, clamorous, vora- 

 cious, thievish, and gregarious ; builds on rocks ; feeds on 

 juniper berries, and insects. It is pleased with glitter, and is, 

 it is said, apt to catch up bits of lighted sticks, by which mis- 

 chief is sometimes produced ; eggs four or five, spotted with 

 yellow. 



The whole of this genus of birds have been commonly con- 

 sidered as mischievous and destructive ; and, too often, writers 

 on natural history have echoed the vulgar opinion. But they 

 are, I think, beyond question, a very useful tribe, the mischiefs 

 which they do being very much outweighed by the good which 

 they produce in the destruction of worms, slugs, &c. so inju- 

 rious to the fruits of the earth. 



* See the description of the Goat-suckers in Part II. 



