270 
OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 
wasps. Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects ; tlius have I seen a 
tame kite picking up the female ants full of eggs, with much 
satisfaction. — White. 
That red-starts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender-billed 
insectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, make their 
first appearance very early in the spring, is a well-known fact ; though 
the fly-catcher is the latest of them all in its visit (as this accurate 
naturalist observes in another place), for it is never seen before the 
month of May. If these delicate creatures come to us from a distant 
country, they will probably be exposed in their passage, as Mr. White 
justly remarks, to much greater difl&culties from storms and tempests 
than their feeble powers appear to be able to surmount : on the other 
hand, if we suppose them to pass the winter in a dormant state in 
this country, concealed in caverns or other hiding-places sufficiently 
guarded from the extreme cold of our winter to preserve their life, and 
that at the approach of spring they revive from their torpid state and 
reassume their usual powers of action, it will entirely remove the first 
difficulty, arising from the storms and tempests they are liable to meet 
with in their passage ; but how are we to get over the still greater diffi- 
culty of their revivification from their torpid state ? What degree of 
warmth in the temperature of the air is necessary to produce that effect, 
and how it operates on the functions of animal life, are questions not 
easily answered. 
How could Mr. White suppose that Eay named this species the 
honey buzzard, because it fed on honey, when he not only named it 
in Latin huteo apivorus et vespivorus, but expressly says that " it feeds 
on insects, and brings up its young with the maggots or nymphs 
of wasps'?" 
That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, some- 
times feed on insects I have little doubt, and I think I have observed 
the common buzzard, /a^co huteo, to settle on the ground and pick up 
insects of some kind or other. — Makkwick. 
EOOKS. 
Rooks are continually fighting, and pulling each other's nests to 
pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in such close 
community. And yet if a pair oflfer to build on a single tree, the nest 
is plundered and demolished at once. Some rooks roost on their nest 
trees. The twigs which the rooks drop in building supply the poor 
with brushwood to light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not 
permitted to finish any nest till the rest have completed their building. 
As soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and demolishes 
the whole. As soon as rooks have finished their nests, and before they 
lay, the cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a 
fondling tremulous voice and fluttering wings, and all the little 
blandishments that are expressed by the young, while in a helpless 
state. This gallant deportment of the males is continued through the 
