The fieldfares comes to us late in the year, and in January, if the weather be very hard, are often the most conspicuous wild birds of the month. Most people mistake them for missel-thrushes, as they travel about in companies over the snow-covered fields, ransacking the hedges in such methodical fashion for the hawthorn berries, or scattering over open patches of ground in quest of seeds or insects. This mistake, doubtless, saves many of their lives, for those who would not shoot our native missel-thrushes in the snow, might have no compunction in bagging the strangers from abroad, who bring with them such a reputation for the table as the fieldfares, and who, it might be urged, are poaching on the scanty winter-provisions of thrush and blackbird--"the hawthorn's berries red, with which the fieldfare, wintry guest, is fed," and which, if it had stayed at home, would help to keep our own song-birds alive through the pinch of the year. In February the rooks have repossessed themselves of their old haunts: "_His airy nursery in the neighbouring elm_ _Constructs the social rook, and makes the grove_ _That girds the crumbling edifice around,_ _And every angle of its ruined pile,_ _With the bass note of his harsh love resound._ HURDIS. "_Lofty elms and venerable oaks_ _Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs_ _In early Spring his airy nursery builds,_ _And ceaseless caws amusive._" THOMSON. "_Soothed by the genial warmth, the cawing rook_ _Anticipates the Spring, selects her mate,_ _Haunts her tall nest-trees, and with sedulous care_ _Repairs her wicker eyrie tempest-torn._" GILBERT WHITE. And so to March and "the throstle with his note so true"; and April, when "the swallow knows her time, and on the vernal breezes wings her way, o'er mountain, plain, and far-extending seas, from Afric's torrid sands to Britain's shore, before the cuckoo"; and May, "with the darling of the Summer's pride, fair Philomel," "the dear good angel of the Spring, the nightingale," and "All vital things that wake to bring News of buds and blossoming." With the swallow and the nightingale, many other birds "transmigrating come, unnumbered colonies on foreign wing, at Nature's summons." From every quarter the aliens, if birds bred on British soil by British-born parents can be called such, converge upon our coasts, just as if England were the centre of a circle at which all the birds who spend the rest of the year upon its circumference congregate for the nesting season, reaching the same point at the same time, but travelling, each company, on a radius of its own.