WHIMBBEL. 201 



baffles any imitation by the human voice." This cry, 

 however, according to Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear, 

 resembles the sounds " Weddy, tetty, tetty, tetty, tet" 

 quickly repeated. Mr. Cordeaux also (" Zoologist," s. s., 

 p. 1283) states, from his observations in Lincolnshire, 

 that they are "far more a land bird than the curlew, 

 feeding almost exclusively in our marshes, retiring 

 occasionally to the flats to rest and bathe ;" being 

 particularly fond of washing and splashing the water 

 over their plumage with their wings. 



Whimbrels as well as curlews differ much in size, 

 which, if a sexual distinction in the one, is the same 

 no doubt, in both, and from the general similarity of 

 the two species in other respects the whimbrel is 

 provincially known by the name of the " half-curlew." 



Mr, Fenwick Hele, of Aldeburgh, who foiind the 

 whimbrel very abundant on that part of the Suffolk 

 coast in May, 1867 (" Field," vol. xxix., p. 389), states 

 that he observed amongst them a light cream-coloured 

 specimen. 



In my account of the common house-sparrow, in 

 the first volume of this work, I ventured to assert that 

 the late Bishop Stanley, in his "Familiar History 

 of Birds," was in error in supposing that the term 

 spowes, so frequently occurring in the " Household and 

 Privy Purse Accounts" of the L'Estrange's of Hun- 

 stanton, referred to the sparrow,* although in one 



* A correspondent in " The East Anglian" (vol. iii., p. 266) signing 

 himself "Alpha," in commenting upon some editorial remarks 

 founded upon my reference to the " spowe," in the first volume of 

 this work, quotes the following passage (to prove that the sparrow 

 was " a recognised article of food long anterior to the date of the 

 Hunstanton Household Book"), from the " Boke of Nurture," 

 written by John Eussell, Usher and Marshall to "good Duke 

 Homphrey, of Gloucester," between 1404 and 1447, as recently 

 2d 



