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Updated: May 5, 2025
I do not think its numbers are much increased at any time of year by migrants, though a few foreigners may arrive in the autumn, at which time of year considerable numbers of Mistletoe Thrushes are brought into the Guernsey market, where they may be seen hanging in bunches with Common Thrushes, Redwings, Blackbirds, Fieldfares, Starlings, and an occasional Ring Ouzel.
No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over. It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in autumn.
Redwings and waxbills pick crumbs from every camp meal; and occasionally a bald-headed eagle utters a lonely raucous cry from solitary perch of dead branch or high rock. Naturally enough, the pack-train unconsciously follows the game-trail of deer and goat and cougar and bear across the slope to the watering-places where springs gush out from the rocks.
Looking down into the meadow as soon as my eyes were thoroughly open, I instantly noticed a covey of young partridges a little way up beside the hedge among the molehills. The neighbourhood of those hillocks has an attraction for many birds, especially in winter. Then fieldfares, redwings, starlings, and others prefer the meadows that are dotted with them.
Fieldfares and redwings rose out of the hedges and flew away in their peculiarly scattered manner their flocks, though proceeding in the same direction, seeming all loose and disordered. Where the ploughs had been at work already the deep furrows were full of elm leaves, wafted as they fell from the trees in such quantities as to make the groove left by the share level with the ridges.
The lane leads on, bordered with high hawthorn hedges, and occasionally a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and twisted by the strong hands of the passing years; thick now with red haws, and the haunt of the redwings, whose "chuck-chuck" is heard every minute; but the birds themselves always perch on the outer side of the hedge.
The dragonflies would alight right on me, and some wore bright blue markings and some blood red. There was a blue beetle, a beautiful green fly, and how the blue wasps did flip, flirt and glint in the light. So did the blackbirds and the redwings. That embankment was left especially to shade the water, and to feed the birds.
When in Guernsey in November, 1871, I did not see either Redwings or Fieldfares till a few days after my arrival on the 1st; after that both species were numerous, and a few days later plenty of them might be seen hanging up in the market with the Thrushes and Blackbirds, but for the first few days there were none to be seen there.
I suggest the question to those whose business it is to be learned in such matters. Mr. Ridgway, in his Manual of North American Birds , had already described a subspecies of Florida redwings under the name of Agelaius phoeniceus bryanti. The tall grass about the borders of the island was alive with clapper rails.
"When do the Summer Citizens begin to come back to their nesting places?" asked Nat. "And when do they go away again?" "The great bird procession begins the first of March with Bluebirds, Robins, Redwings, and Meadowlarks, but it is the first of June before the latest comers, the little Marsh Wrens, are settled.
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