OBSEEYATIONS ON BIEDS. 
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BIRDS IN GENERAL. 
In severe weather, fieldfares, redwings, sky-larks, and tit-larks, resort 
to watered meadows for food ; the latter wades up to its belly in pursuit 
of the pupae of insects, and runs along upon the floating grass and 
weeds. Many gnats are on the snow near the water, these support the 
birds in part. 
Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour, for 
though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they 
seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of the 
latter. 
Red-starts, fly-catchers, and black-caps, arrive early in April. If 
these little delicate beings are birds of passage (as we have reason to 
suppose they are, because they are never seen in winter), how could 
they, feeble as they seem, bear up against such storms of snow and 
rain, and make their way through such meteorous turbulences, as one 
should suppose would embarrass and retard the most hardy and resolute 
of the winged nation? Yet they keep their appointed times and 
seasons; and in spite of frosts and winds return to their stations 
periodically as if they had met with nothing to obstruct them. The 
withdrawing and appearance of the short-winged summer birds is a 
very puzzling circumstance in natural history. 
When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls fare 
deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the young 
wasps in their maggot state with the highest glee and delight.* Any 
insect-eating bird would do the same ; and therefore I have often 
wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray should call one species of buzzard 
huteo apivorus sive vespivorus, or the honey buzzard, because some 
combs of wasps happened to be found in one of their nests. The combs 
were conveyed thither doubtless for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, 
and not for their honey, since none is to be found in the combs of 
* See Letter XLIII. Mr. White is quite correct, it is for the larvae the combs 
are sought after, we do not know any instance where honey is preyed upon. 
Several hawks are partially insectivorous, particularly some of the small foreign 
species. The kestrel of Europe sometimes feeds on coleoptera. 
