PREFACE. 



The object which I had in view, when, many years ago, T 

 commenced the observations recorded in this work, was at 

 some convenient season to lay before the public Descriptions 

 of the Birds of Great Britain, more extended, and, if possible, 

 more correct, than any previously offered. To accomplish so 

 ambitious a purpose, I judged it necessary to direct my attention 

 to the living objects themselves, rather than to their skins in 

 collections, or their portraits in books, to follow them in their 

 haunts, observe their manners, procure unmutilated specimens, 

 carefully examine all their parts, and thus be enabled to bring 

 forward facts that had been entirely overlooked, and place 

 others in a light in which they had not previously been viewed. 

 Short specific characters, slight descriptions or notices, and 

 measurements of parts, I could easily have obtained by visit- 

 ing museums and consulting books ; but the elaboration of a 

 detailed account of the species, such as is to be found in the 

 following pages, could obviously be accomplished only by much 

 labour of a different kind. 



They who have always contented themselves with the 

 meagre and unsatisfactory notices given by systematic writers, 

 or with the vague though often florid accounts of closet natu- 

 ralists, may judge a great part of this labour uncalled for and 

 unnecessary. The mere describers of skins on the one hand, 

 and the mere observers of the manners of birds on the other, 

 will no doubt find in protracted descriptions much that they 



