FlELDFAllE. 
173 
districts, if the winter he a hard one, and at the commencement 
of some severe snow-storm, when ‘across the wold the wind 
blows cold,’ large flights may be seen overhead wending their 
way to some place of refuge, and again, as soon as there are 
the earliest symptoms of a change, nay, even before we can 
perceive any, they begin to return to their former quarters, 
and therewith to their previous shyness, which dire necessity 
alone had for the time overcome. If the snow continues long 
upon the ground, so that their needful supply is exhausted 
before their ordinary food can be again obtained, thousands 
are starved to death through the joint wasting of hunger 
and cold. Sir William Jardine exactly describes their manner 
when suffering from severity; then when alarmed, he says, 
instead of the alert rising flight, and the loud chatter of 
prosperity, they weakly flutter off to the nearest cover, and 
will scarcely again betake themselves to flight. Some are 
said to remain in this country to breed. Mr. Allis, in his 
‘Catalogue of the Birds of Yorkshire,’ already referred to, 
mentions one such instance as having occurred at Lepton, 
near Huddersfield, in the West-Biding. Other instances are 
also said to have been known in this country. A nest has 
been found, it is related, in Kent, and some obtained in 
Scotland; two are also recorded by the editor of ‘Pennant’s 
British Zoology.’ In the Orkney Islands a few occasionally 
stay during the whole year, but have never been known to 
breed. 
These birds go in large flocks, frequently of several hundreds, 
and commonly in parties of not less than thirty or forty 
together; occasionally, however, two or three seem to withdraw 
from the main body, and frequent some quiet and retired 
hedgerow in company with the Blackbird and the Thrush. 
Their thought may be to remain to breed, hut for the most 
part, from some cause or other, it is doomed to be an abortive 
one. They are sometimes rather quarrelsome when engaged 
in feeding on a common crop. They roost both in trees and 
on the ground, and in bushes near the latter, but for the 
most part in the former, in some parts of the country at all 
events. They often associate with the Bedwing, as also with 
the Missel Thrush and the Throstle. They are said to be 
not at all shy in the breeding-season in their native countries, 
but in fact all birds’ natures are then temporarily altered 
more or less in this respect. They are capable of being kept* 
in confinement. 
