4 BLACKBIRD.
I am ignorant whether this species usually pairs and nests at the age of one year. In an instance
where there was every chance for observation, I remarked that a young male did not pale till the third year.
A nestling token from our own garden and reared in confinement, proved, when full-grown, so exceedingly
wild, that all hopes as to his becoming reconciled to captivity having failed, he was at length released.
When once at liberty his nature appeared thoroughly changed, and taking up his quarters in a small
shrubbery in close proximity to the kitchen windows, he came daily and called with a low and plaintive cry
fur food. When twelve months old he did not pair, indeed the poor fellow appeared rather frightened at
the presence of a female that invaded his haunts, being seen on more than one occasion beating a hasty
retreat and the lady in full pursuit. A year later he took unto himself a wife, and a brood or two wcro
reared, our old friend remaining as familiar as formerly, though the female was by no means so confiding.
Both birds still resort to their old quarters, the female becoming bolder in severe weather, and approaching
like her lord and master to tap the windows w lion their accustomed supply of food has been forgotten. The
yuung broods are not allowed to remain for any length of time in the small doiuaiu over which the old bird
has now assumed the rule. His efforts about roostiiig-time on a cold winter's evening to prevent the few
Yellow Hammers that make their way in off the downs from gaining the shelter of some dense hushes of
OaWftMHM are at times most amusing, I he unfortunate birds being driven from one spot to another till alter
daylight has disappeared.
TUNG-OUZEL.
TURBVS TOmVATUS.
Tnr. Ring-Ouzel is only a summer visitor to our shores, resorting in numbers during the breeding-season
to the wild moorlands of the north and a few also remaining to rear their young in several English counties—
too often enumerated by various authors to need a repetition in these pages of those I am acquainted with.
Sussex is not included in the lists of those in which the nests have been discovered, though I possess the
best evidence that a pair reared their young, in the spring of 1805, in the lower branches of a stunted
thorn hush to a sloping hollow in the South Downs near Thunder Barrow, between Portslado and the Dyke
Hill, the juveniles being seen near the same spot, attended by the old birds, a week or so after they
were observed in (be nest. -My informant (who was well acquainted with this species at that time, held a
situation as gardener at the Manor House, Portslado, and is now at our place near Brighton) also stated
that the previous year a shepherd had told him that a bird resembling a Blackbird with a white ring
round the throat (which he soon ascertained to be a Ring-Ouzel) had taken up its quarters in a ruined
hovel iu one of the valleys among the hills near Ilangleton, the nest having been placed on the wallplate
in Hie space left where one of the rafters had fallen away. Though the Onsal is generally well
known in this part of Sussex, a few being seen annually in spring while on the passage towards the north,
and numbers frequenting the hills about Palmer, Pateham, and Portslado during the latter end of autumn,
T failed to learn of other instances of this species remaining during summer in the county.
These birds reach our shores towards the end of April or early in May; while fishing on the broads
and rivers in the east of Norfolk about that date or a week or so later, I usually observed a few alighting
on the marsh-walls and Hying to the fields in quest of food. At that, season they seldom remained any
time in the district, appearing eager to resume their passage; the course they held was invariably duo
north-east, as if bound for the coast. It was seldom before the end of the second or third week in May
that wc noticed any Ouzels in Gleulyon: numbers, however, frequented the corrics and sheltered gullies
on the rough bill-sides, their nests being placed for the most part on the ledges or in the cracks or crevices
among the broken slabs of rock that are to he found here and there on the steeper portions of the moors.
Ouzels appear to suffer occasionally from the attacks of the various predatory species, as a nest or
two that bad been deserted was now and then noticed; Peregrines or Sparrow-Hanks in all probability
were the culprits. Though Merlins have been accused of destroying these birds, I was unable to bring
any charges against the few pairs that frequented our ground. The shell of an Ouzel's egg that bad lieen
sucked was discovered in the nest of a pair of Crows (the one black and the other grey), plainly indicating
that these plunderers were by no means averse to varying their usual diet of Grouse eggs with those of
smaller species. While engaged in killing down the vermin in the spring of lSfiti on one or the hills to
the south of the Lyou in Perthshire, a fine old male was taken in a clam set for a stoat in the ruins of
an antiquated shoaling. The bird must have had some difficulty in forcing its way up the narrow track