BRITISH BIRDS OF THE ROBIN KIND. 



parts, also, are more dingy ; and the under tail-coverts are tinged with 

 yellow, a character by which it may always be at once distinguished 

 from the wood- wren, in which these feathers are of the purest white. 

 The legs (tarsi) and feet of the willow-wren are of a yellow brown, 

 forming the best distinctive character between it and the chiff-chaff, 

 the legs and feet of which are of a dark brownish black. 



The chiff-chaff pettychaps, (S. loquax). This species, though very 

 well known to the naturalists of this country, seems to have been 

 altogether overlooked on the continent, or confounded with the rufous 

 pettychaps, (S. nifa.) It assimilates most closely in appearance to 

 the willow-wren (S. melodia), but may be distinguished by being 

 rather smaller, and of a rather darker hue ; but more especially by the 

 different colour of the legs and feet, and by the comparative shortness of 

 the wings, which in this species, when closed, hardly reach to the tail. 

 Its song, also, differs most essentially from that of the willow-wren, 

 and consists but of two notes, resembling chik, chah, chik, chah, chik, 

 chah, repeated ten or twelve times in monotonous succession, and 

 which, as the excellent observer White remarks, are often uttered with 

 such emphasis as to cause a distinct echo in hollow woods. These 

 notes, however, are not always exactly as above represented ; sometimes 

 they are nearly monotonous, and at other times they may be expressed 

 better by tsick, tsing, tsick, tsing ; and occasionally, but rarely, a note 

 like chrah, chruh, is introduced : but that these all proceed from one 

 and the same species I have ascertained by means of the gun. Though 

 this is the smallest of the three common species, the tibia bone of the 

 leg is longer than in either the willow-wren or the wood-wren. It is 

 the earliest of the summer birds of passage, (at least, of the migratory 

 Sylviadce,') and in these parts, is generally first heard about the close of 

 the month of March. Like the willow-wren and the wood-wren, it 

 sometimes sings as it flies from tree to tree. 



In a monograph of these birds, by the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, 

 in one of his notes to White's Selborne, mention is made of a species 

 distinct from either of the above, under the name of the ching-ching, 

 or monotonous wren (pettychaps), which he considers to be identical 

 with the bee-Jin a poitrine jaune, (Sylvia hippolais,} of M. Temminck. 

 He adds further, that " it frequents trees in woods, and may be seen 

 very conspicuous upon oak trees, before the leaves are full grown, 

 articulating its monotonous ching, ching, ching. I observed and 

 listened to one for a long time last week, on the twenty-eighth of May, 

 on some oak trees in Coombe Wood, near Kirigston-upon-Thames, at 



