BLACKBIRD VERSUS THRUSH
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Snt,—Sir W. Beach Thomas's notes on "Blackbird versus Thrush" and "Frost Victims" in your" Country Life" of May 18th remind me of the great frost through February in 1895. I was then Vicar of Husborne Crawley, in which is situated part of the park of the Duke of Bedford and also His Grace's experimental fruit farm at Ridgmont Station. At that farm was registered one night forty-one degrees of frost.
The keepers told me that when ferreting after the frost they found both blackbirds and thrushes dead in the rabbit-holes, whither presumably they had gone for protection from the frost. I have never seen a blackbird interfere with a thrush, but among those dead in the rabbit-holes thrushes were the more numerous.
The thrush seems constitutionally weaker than the blackbird, yet exposes itself much more to attack by sparrow-hawks, as it does not keep so closely to hedges. I have known on the golf-links at Hexham a gull kill a thrush—perhaps through jealousy of its supposed territorial rights.—! am, Sir, &c.,
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