LINGERING BIRDS. 
182 
the flights may be large, they become wild ; and the 
flesh, assuming its darkness, manifests that their food 
has not been farinaceous. The distant foreign migra- 
tions, which have been stated to take place from the 
meadows of the Severn, I believe to be only these in- 
land trips ; and that the supposed migrators returned to 
those stations fat and in good condition, owing to their 
having fed during their absence on the nutricious berry 
of the white thorn. I have several times seen the fruit 
on our hedges refused by these birds, and this too in 
no very temperate season ; but in all these cases, the 
summer had been ungenial — the berries had not ripen- 
ed well, they were nipped by the frosts of October, and 
hung on the sprays dark in color, small, and juiceless 
in substance. The summer of 1825 produced the finest 
and largest haws I ever remember. They were in gene- 
ral of a bright red hue, and filled with farinaceous pulp ; 
and in consequence, though the season was uncom- 
monly mild and open, long before Christmas, little 
wandering parties of these birds consumed the whole 
of them. 
Perfectly gregarious as the fieldfare is, yet we ob- 
serve every year, in some tall hedge-row, or little, 
quiet pasture, two or three of them that have with- 
drawn from the main flocks, and there associate with 
the blackbird and the thrush. They do not appear to 
be wounded birds, which from necessity have sought 
concealment and quiet, but to have retired from in- 
clination ; and I have reason to apprehend that these 
retreats are occasionally made for the purpose of form- 
ing nests, though they are afterwards abandoned with- 
out incubation ; as I have now before me the egg of a 
bird, which I believe to be that of a fieldfare^, taken 
from a nest somewhat like that formed by the song- 
thrush, in 1824. Its color is uniform- — a rather pale 
blue ; it is larger than that of the thrush, obtuse at both 
ends, and unlike any egg produced by our known British 
birds. These retiring birds linger with us late in the 
season, after all the main flights are departed, as if re- 
luctant to leave us ; but towards the middle or end of 
