298 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



a passage or cavity with a way ir> at either end in which a horsehair 

 noose, or, according to other accounts, two such nooses, were fixed. 

 Descriptions of the precise construction of these traps differ somewhat 

 and some are perhaps inaccurate, though no doubt the details did 

 vary. Two types for which there is firsthand authority are figured 

 by Walpole-Bond (1938) in the latest treatment of the subject. In 

 both of these the excavation was T-shaped, the crosspiece of the T 

 formed by the removal of an oblong sod about two-thirds as wide 

 as long (dimensions of about 8 by 11 inches have been mentioned), 

 while the other limb of the T, across which the sod was placed, was 

 longer and relatively narrow. Owing to the birds' predilection for 

 running into shelters of this kind, and being deceived by the appearance 

 of a clear way through, they were very easily taken in such snares. 

 The scale on which these traps were operated and the numbers of 

 birds taken were astonishing. In Yarrell's "History of British Birds" 

 (1874) it is stated: 



One man and his lad can look after from five to seven hundred of them. They 

 are opened every year about St. James's Day, July 25th, and are all in operation 

 by August 1st. The birds arrive by hundreds, though not in flocks, in daily 

 succession for the next six or seven weeks. The season for catching is concluded 

 about the end of the third week in September, after which very few birds are 

 observed to pass. Pennant, more than a century since, stated that the numbers 

 snared about Eastbourne amounted annually to about 1,840 dozens, which were 

 usually sold for sixpence the dozen, and Markwick, in 1798, recorded his having 

 been told that, in two August days of 1792, his informant, a shepherd, had taken 

 there twenty-seven dozens; but this is a small number compared with the almost 

 incredible quantity sometimes taken, for another person told the same naturalist 

 of a shepherd who once caught eighty-four dozens in one day. In Montagu's 

 time (1802) the price had risen to a shilling a dozen, and it is now much higher, 

 through the greater demand for and smaller supply of the birds. 



In the course of the nineteenth century the numbers taken grad- 

 ually declined and the practice has fortunately long died out, though 

 Walpole-Bond (1938) mentions that up to as recently as 1902 wheat- 

 ears were still sent in fairly large numbers to certain hotels at Brighton 

 and perhaps Eastbourne as well. It appears, however, that these 

 were chiefly "caught in clap-nets spread ostensibly for Starlings" and 

 "that very few were captured by the old-fashioned method." 



A list of ecto- and endoparasites recorded from the species is given 

 by Niethammer (1937). 



Fall and winter. — From what has been said in the preceding section 

 it will be apparent that wheatears may occur in large numbers in 

 coastal districts on the autumn migration. But it is rarely, if ever, 

 that they are in anything that can properly be called a flock; when 

 the numbers are large the birds are usually widely scattered, and 

 although they may be said to exhibit social tendencies to the extent 



