ON THE HABITS OF THE OX-EYE. 



Ill 



and I have never observed him to evince the least disposition to 

 annoy the rest." 



Upon the faith of this, I turned my ox-eye loose at night into my 

 aviary, where there are more than thirty birds, chiefly summer 

 birds of passage ; but I had some doubts of his good behaviour, 

 when Colonel Montagu expressly says, " it will sometimes attack a 

 bird its inferior in size, or one in a sickly state, fracturing its skull 

 by repeated strokes of its pointed bill." * M. Bechstein also says, 

 " if they have not plenty of food which they like, they will attack 

 other birds, and pierce their skull to feast on the brain. When they 

 have once tasted this food, there is no security for the birds in an 

 aviary, whatever may be their size. I had myself an ox-eye which 

 attacked a quail, and killed it in this way."t 



Notwithstanding these authorities, I trusted to the fear which all 

 strange birds usually have of the others when turned loose in the 

 aviary, for keeping the ox-eye quiet, and I resolved to watch his 

 motions next morning. I was, however, too late; for in less than 

 an hour after day light, when my daughter went into the aviary to 

 give the birds water, she found a poor fauvette (Sylvia hortensis) 

 already killed, and the ox-eye standing by with his beak and breast 

 covered with blood. But it would appear that the fauvette had not 

 died without retaliating, for the ox-eye was himself in articulo mortis, 

 as a medical man would say. and died in a few minutes, though this 

 might be from exhaustion in making the attack. Perhaps some of 

 the other birds, particularly a very cross-grained pugnacious night- 

 ingale, which I purchased in Rotterdam in June last, might have 

 come to the assistance of the fauvette, and revenged its death on 

 the ox-eye. 



My intelligent friend, however, has a precedent of high authority, 

 as I have just discovered, for the peaceable disposition of his bird 

 as I have for the ferocity of mine. " I have learned from expe- 

 rience," says M. Montbeillard, " that the ox-eye kept in the cage 

 sometimes cleaves the skull of the young birds that are presented 

 to it, and feeds greedily on the brain. M. Ilebert ascertained nearly 

 the same fact by an experiment which he made : he put a redbreast 

 in the same cage with eight or ten ox-eyes, about nine in the morn- 

 ing 5 and against mid-day the skull of the red-breast was bared, 

 and the brain entirely eaten. On the other hand, I have seen many 



* Ornith. Diet. 2nd edit. p. 550. 



t Naturgeschichte der Stubenthiere, 3rd edit. p. 553-4. 



