44 NATUI AL HISTORY 
house-martin, should leave us before the middle of 
August invariably! while the latter stay often till 
the middle of October; and once I saw numbers 
of house-martins on the 7th of November. The 
martins and red-.wing fieldfares were flying in sight 
together ; an uncommon assemblage of summer 
and winter birds! 
A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the 
alauda trivialis, or rather, perhaps, of the motacilla 
trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shiver- 
ing noise in the tops of tall woods. ‘The stoparola 
of Ray (for which we have, as yet, no name in these 
parts) is called in your Zoology the Fiy-caTcHER. 
There is one circumstance characteristic of this 
bird which seems to have escaped observation; and 
_ that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake 
or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, 
catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching 
the ground, but returning still to the same stand for 
many times together. 
I perceive there are more than one species of the 
motacilla trochilus : Mr. Derham supposes, in Ray’s 
