138 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
part or other of this island : but then they are always mentioned 
as rarities, and somewhat out of the common course of things :* 
but as to redwings and fieldfares, no sportsman or naturalist has 
ever yet, that I could hear, pretended to have found the nest or 
young of those species in any part of these kingdoms. And I 
the more admire at this instance as extraordinary, since, to all 
appearance, the same food in summer as well as in winter might 
vsupport them here which maintains their congeners, the black- 
birds and thrushes, did they choose to stay the summer through. 
From hence it 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 remem- 
ber, after that dreadful winter 1739-40, that cold north-east 
vs^inds 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 testimony of faunists 
that have written professedly the natural history of particular 
countries. Now, as to the fieldfare, Linnaeus, in his Fauna 
Suecica, says of it that " maximis irt arhoribus nidificat and of 
the redwing he says, in the same place, that " nidificat in mediis 
arhusculis, sive sepibus: ova sex cceruleo-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 cequinoctium vernale .'^ 
meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native. And afterwards he 
di^di^ " nidificat in paludihus alpinis : ovaponitS — 5." It does 
not appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria : 
but he says " Avis hcec septentrionalium provinciarum astivo tem-^ 
pore incola est ; uhi plerumque nidificat. Appropinquante hyeme 
australiores provincias petit : hinc circa plenilunium mensis Octo- 
hris plerumque Austriam transmigrat. Tunc rursus circa plenilu- 
* Admitting without hesitation that by far the great majority of woodcocks migrate, I am stiU 
of opinion that many more breed in this country, even in the southern districts, than is com- 
monly supposed. So hidling a bird as the woodcock may readily escape detection in the summer 
mouths. 1 have at different times seen a considerable number of young ones ; and last year there 
was a brood close to my residence, within seven miles of London. This year, also, I obtained 
one in Surrey so early as on the twentieth of April, nearly half grown, notwithstanding the ex- 
treme backwardness of the season, and although the old birds, together with snipes of both the 
common species, were still not rare in the London markets. — £d. 
