112 THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN. 
raise the young of the cirl bunting,* until he discovered 
that they required grasshoppers, is a sufficient instance 
of the manifest necessity there is for a peculiar food in 
one period of the life of birds ; and renders it probable 
that, to obtain a certain aliment, this willow wren, and 
others of the insect and fruit-feeding birds, direct their 
flight to distant regions, and is the principal cause of 
their migrations. 
It is some stimulus like this, which urges that little 
creature, the golden-crested wren (motacilla regulus), 
that usually only flits from tree to tree, and never at- 
tempts upon common occasions a longer flight, to tra- 
verse the vast distance from the Orkneys to the Shet- 
land Isles over stormy seas that admit no possible rest 
during its long passage of above fifty miles ! There it 
breeds its young ; but this one object accomplished, it 
leaves those isles, dares again this tedious flight, and 
seeks a milder clime. With us it never migrates, lives 
much in our fir groves during the winter, and breeds in 
our shrubberies in summer. Peculiar necessities, such 
as these, may incite the migration of many birds ,* but 
that certain species, which lead solitary lives, or asso- 
ciate only in very small parties, should at stated periods 
congregate from all parts to one spot, and there hold 
council on a removal, in which the very sexes occasion- 
ally separate, is one of the most extraordinary procedures 
that we meet with among animals. 
If the sober, domestic attachments of the hedge 
sparrow please us, we are not less charmed with the 
innocent, blithesome gaiety of the linnet (fringilla 
linota). But this songster is no solitary visiter of our 
dwellings : it delights and lives in society, frequenting 
open commons and gorsy fields, where several pairs, 
without the least rivalry or contention, will build their 
nests and rear their offspring in the same neighborhood, 
twittering and warbling all the day long. This duty 
over, the families unite, and form large associations, 
feeding and moving in company as one united house- 
hold ; and, resorting to the head of some sunny tree, 
* Linnean Transactions, vol. vii. 
