Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/36

12 shelter and concealment afforded by the brushwood and undergrowth, and so bivouac for the night. I have been reminded that Mr. Seebohm, in a most delightful chapter on the Fieldfare, writes:—"Instances are alleged of these birds having been flushed from the stubbles or the pastures at dusk; but this is the Fieldfare's feeding-hour; and if shrubberies be near at hand, it is there they spend the night." This is a decided expression of opinion, and comes from a great authority; but though Fieldfares may feed at dusk, a statement I venture to question, I doubt their doing so between the hours of ten and eleven at night, at which time, I repeat, I have often disturbed them from the open grass fields.

Nevertheless, it is one thing to detect the slips and question the statements of previous writers, to whom we all owe so much; quite another to write a book; and I can only trust that any criticisms of mine, wherever they may appear, will not be regarded as written in a captious, cavilling spirit. I am too well aware that many of my predecessors, in whose footsteps I am humbly and laboriously treading, have forgotten more than I can ever hope to know.

It is, of course, notorious that this species frequently breeds in large colonies. I have had its eggs from Norway, and was much struck by their resemblance to plain as well as handsome eggs of the Blackbird and the Ring-Ousel, with which, I should imagine, they may very easily be confounded at times by even expert oologists. Fieldfares have little knowledge of economy, otherwise they would better husband their resources in the matter of food supply. They will strip bushes of hips and haws in open weather when an insectivorous diet would prove equally sustaining, and then when a spell of frost and snow is over the country and there is nothing to be extracted from the fields, the produce of the hedges which has been prematurely attacked is liable to run short.

I have dwelt at some length on this species, as it is both well-known and a favourite. In short, what the Swallow is to the spring, the Fieldfare is to the autumn,—they each in turn serve to mark an epoch in time's revolving wheel.