84 
MERULIDiE. 
INCESSOIIES. MERULIDJE. 
DENTIROSTRES. 
FIELDFARE. 
Turdus pilaris. 
PLATE XXIV. FIG. III. 
Living in a town which had fostered the existing taste 
for ornithology, and spread it widely through our native 
land by the immortal birds of Bewick, we had for long 
felt dissatisfied at the slow progress which was making in 
a knowledge of their nidification and their eggs. 
In the hope of satisfying some of our own cravings, and 
more still of giving an impulse to one of our favourite 
pursuits, two bird-nesting expeditions to the north of 
Europe, planned during the winter of 1832, were success¬ 
fully accomplished during the succeeding summer, one 
by Mr. G. C. Atkinson to the Feroe Isles and Iceland, 
of which I shall have to speak when we reach the water- 
birds, the other to the coast of Norway, by my friends 
John Hancock, B. Johnson, and myself. Intending that 
the Fieldfare should be our avant courier to its native 
land, it was with peculiar interest that we watched its long 
lingering in our own for weeks after our blackbirds and 
thrushes had commenced their nidification. It was not 
until the end of April that the last of them took their 
departure from our neighbourhood. 
In a few days afterwards, on the 14th of May, our first 
day in Norway, we enjoyed the pleasure of again seeing 
them in their own wild native woods, engaged so earlv 
after their arrival, in all the bustle of preparation for the 
