THE BLUE-BREAST.
Motacilla Suecica, Linnæus; La Gorge bleue, Buffon; Das Blaukehlchen, Bechstein.
This bird may be considered as intermediate between the redstart and the common wagtail, having very strong points of resemblance with both. Its length is five inches and a half, of which the tail occupies two and a quarter. The beak is sharp and blackish, yellow at the angles; the iris is brown; the shanks are fourteen lines high, of a reddish brown, and the toes blackish; the head, the back, and the wing-coverts are ashy brown, mottled with a darker tint; a reddish white line passes above the eyes; the cheeks are dark brown, spotted with rust red, and edged at the side with deep ash grey; a brilliant sky blue covers the throat and half way down the breast; this is set off by a spot of the most dazzling white, the size of a pea, placed precisely over the gullet, which, enlarging and diminishing successively, by the movement of this part when the bird sings, produces the most beautiful effect.
Some males have two little white spots on the throat, some even have three, while others have none; these latter are probably very old, for I have observed that as the bird grows older the blue deepens, and the orange band becomes almost maroon.
It is easy to distinguish the female; when young she has a celestial blue tint on the sides of the throat; this tint deepens with age, and forms two longitudinal lines on the sides of the neck; no orange band; the throat and gullet are yellowish blue, edged longitudinally with a black line; the feet are flesh-coloured.
Habitation.—When wild this species exists all over Europe[94]. It is a bird of passage, and when returning towards the north, in the beginning of April, it stops in large flights near streams, in hedges, and damp fields, comes even into courts, and on the dunghills of farms, if surprised by snow and a severe return of cold. In the summer it frequents those parts among the mountains abounding with water; in August it approaches cabbage fields enclosed by hedges or bushes. It is very seldom that one or two pairs build in our country.
In confinement it may be let run about; it soon grows so tame as to come when called, and feed from the hand. Its rapid motions and races are amusing; but it must not be allowed to fly high enough to get on the tables and furniture, as it would soon dirty them. It sings better and longer when caged. The cage should be, like the nightingale’e, large enough for the bird not to spoil its beautiful feathers; the tail-feathers easily drop if they are rubbed.
Food.—When wild the blue-breast feeds on all sorts of insects; it also eats elderberries.
In confinement it must at first be fed with ants’ eggs, meal-worms, and even some earth-worms. If it is kept uncaged these things must be thrown upon the universal paste, which it will thus learn to relish; but though it is easily reconciled to it, ants’ eggs, earth and meal-worms, must nevertheless be occasionally supplied, or it will soon die in decline. When caged it is fed like nightingales, and on that food it will live seven or eight years. It is a great eater, and can devour in a day its own weight of the first universal paste, so that it mutes incessantly. It requires a constant supply of fresh water for drinking and bathing: it wets itself so much that it is completely drenched. I have observed for several successive years that it never bathes till the afternoon[95].
Diseases.—Diarrhœa and decline are its commonest disorders. The treatment has been pointed out in the Introduction.