160 
NATURAL HISTOBY 
appears that it is not food alone which determines some 
species of birds with regard to their stay or departure. 
Fieldfares and redwings disappear sooner or later according 
as the warm weather comes on earlier or later. For I well 
remember^ after that dreadful winter, 1739-40, that cold 
north-east winds continued to blow on through April and 
May, and that these kinds of birds (what few remained of 
them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering 
about till the beginning of June. 
The best authority that we can have for the nidification 
of the birds above mentioned in any district, is the testi- 
mony of faunists that have written professedly the natural 
history of particular countries. IN'ow, as to the fieldfare, 
Linnaeus, in his Fauna Suecica,'^ says of it, that maximis 
in arhorihus nidificat and of the redwing he says, in the 
same place, that niclificat in mediis arhusculis, sive 
sepihus : ova sex coeruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis." 
Hence we may be assured that fieldfares and redwings 
breed in Sweden. Scopoli says, in his " Annus Primus,'^ of 
the woodcock, that " nupta ad nos venit circa cequinodium 
vernale meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native. And 
afterwards he adds, nidificat inpaludibus alpinis : ova ponit 
3 — h'' It does not appear from Kramer that woodcocks 
breed at all in Austria : but he says, Avis hcec septentrio- 
nalium provinciarum cestivo tempore incola est; uhi plerumque 
nidificat. Appropinquante hyeme, australiores provincias 
petit : Jiinc circa plenilunium mensis Octohris plerumque 
in Selkirkshire (see Faii^holme, "Mag. Nat. Hist." 1837, pp. 339 and 
439). The late Mr. Blyth published an account of its having nested 
at Merton, in Surrey (" Mag. Nat. Hist." vol. iii. p. 467), but unfortu- 
nately he did not see the bii'ds himself. Another supposed instance 
of the fieldfare breeding in the south of England was reported by Dr. 
Bree in " The Field" of June 12th and 19th, 1869. Mr. Blyth stated 
("Mag. Nat. Hist." vol. vii. p. 242), that both the redwing and fieldfare 
had been repeatedly seen throughout the summer in a wood called the 
Wood of Logie, upon the estate of Sir John Forbes, at Fintry, in 
Aberdeenshire. On the 29th July, 1864, a fieldfare was shot in a 
garden near Kirby Muxloe, in Leicestershire, and forwarded to the 
editor of" The Field" for examination (see " Zoologist," 1864, p. 9248). 
It had been observed about the garden all the summer. — Ed. 
