Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/158

 vegetable. The entire flesh also when dressed, partook strongly of the flavour of the turnip.

As a difference of opinion exists among authors on the subject of the fieldfare's food, I give the contents of the stomachs of seven other individuals examined by me, and which were killed at various times and places during two seasons. Of these, one contained two limacelli, (internal shells of naked snails belonging to the genus Limax, Linn.) the remains of coleopterous insects, and some vegetable matter; this last substance only appeared in the second; the third was filled with oats alone, though the weather was mild, and had been so for some time before; the fourth contained worms and bits of grass; these last, together with pieces of straw and the husks of grain, were found in the fifth, — the weather was severe and frosty for a week pre- viously ; the sixth was stored with the husks, and one grain of oats ; the seventh, obtained in mild weather, was filled with the stones of haws of the white-thorn. These birds have often been observed by a person of my acquaintance regaling on the haws or fruit of that plant, during frosty weather.

Mr. Hewitson remarks : — "The fieldfare is the most abun- dant bird in Norway, and is generally diffused over that part of the country which we visited, from Drontheim to the Arctic circle. It builds in society. Two hundred nests or upwards may be found within a small circuit of the forest." * Nothing is said of its song. The fieldfare "only arrives in Provence when the cold is excessive at the beginning of winter. It stays in the wildest places, and departs at the approach of spring. It does not cross the [Mediterranean] sea." f

I have seen flocks of thrushes late in autumn, I am of

Egg's Brit. Birds, p. 58.

t M. Duval-Jouve in Zoologist, October, 1845, p. 1118.