NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
75 
Should any of our readers wish to amuse themselves in the delightful and 
interesting occupation of making and erecting nesting boxes, I can strongly 
recommend them to get “ Wild bird Protection and Nesting Boxes,” of John 
R. B. Masefield (Taylor Bros., Leeds), reviewed in Naturk Notes some 
time ago. W. 
March 8, 1902. 
Birds and Berries. — In “The Country Month by Month,” by J. A. 
Owen and G. S. Boulger, reference is made to berries eaten by wild birds. A 
quotation from Lord Lilford runs as follows, “I know very well that in severe 
weather, many birds are driven to feed upon holly berries. ... I want to 
find out what birds habitually devour under ordinary circumstances,” p. 20-21. 
Now from personal observation I have found that song thrushes and the rarer 
missel thrushes, eat freely holly berries, a small holly tree in our garden being 
stripped of its fruit in the mild open weather of late autumn. The missel thrush 
also likes yew and rowan berries. Blackbirds sink with outstretched wings upon 
bushes too slender for comfortable perching, and devour the black berries of the 
bay, and hard unfleshy laurustinus berries. Wood pigeons also are very fond of 
the former. The rose hips, as soon as soft, hang sucked flat by the birds. In 
autumn, too, I was surprised to see a robin eating myrtle berries from an old tree, 
grown, by-the-by, from a slip given by John Evelyn’s family in a wedding bouquet, 
to an ancestress of mine. The foregoing remarks tend to show, I think, that 
wild birds readily feed on berries and fruit also, though able at the same time to 
procure their ordinary diet. 
E. G. WooDi). 
Hampstead Birds. — Although many of the thick copses and quaint old- 
fashioned gardens, characteristic of “ Old Hampstead,” are being swept away by 
the builder, yet the town and neighbourhood still remain a favourite resort of 
many kinds of birds. On January 3, of this year, a flight of waxwings {Bombycilla 
garrula), consisting of more than a dozen birds, was seen on the West Heath, 
near the Kite Pond, and there were subsequent observations of them at Golders 
Hill, the enclosure of some forty acres adjoining the Heath. It is twenty years 
since I glimpsed waxwings in this locality. Among other species observed during 
this winter have been snow-buntings, cirl, and the common yellow ammer (the last 
a permanent resident, and building on the Heath), as well as bramble finches, 
siskins and red-poles. Near one of the ponds — for prudential reasons I refrain 
from indicating which — a kingfisher has taken up its abode, and on several 
occasions, to the delight of the owners, has appeared in gardens not far away ; 
close here, too, a snipe or two are sometimes seen, while to the ponds, where 
wild ducks have for years made their home, seagulls and divers occasionally come. 
Hampstead is a special resort of song thrushes, and all through the winter, 
including each day during the hard weather of last month (February) the beautiful 
notes of these melodious songsters might have been heard. There can be no 
doubt that thrushlings of the previous spring — as do also blackbirds and 01 her 
species — migrate with the autumn. Were this not so, thrushes and others of their 
kindred, which have at least two broods in the spring, would soon become almost, 
if not quite, as numerous as house-sparrows. When living near the east coast in 
Kent, I used to observe every autumn large flights of thrushes and blackbirds, 
chiefly young birds of the previous spring, congregate before departing from our 
shores across the sea, hundreds and thousands of which perhaps never return. 
Hampstead. James E. Whiting. 
March 3, 1902. 
Tame Gulls. — During the last few weeks there have been several hard 
frosts, and we have had some splendid skating on Derwentwater. Since the 
hard weather commenced the gulls have become very tame, and it is very 
interesting to watch them feeding in the garden, just outside our window. 
Between twenty and thirty of them come to be fed daily, and amongst them we 
noticed one which had apparently broken the lower part of its beak, which was 
hanging down quite useless, so this poor gull did not get much to eat while 
the others were there. On Sunday evening, just before six o’clock, the poor 
