64 NATURAL HISTORY 
saken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very 
much thinned down by that fierce weather in Jan- 
uary. 
In the middle of February I discovered in my 
tall hedges a little bird that raised my curiosity ; it 
was of that yellow-green colour that belongs to the 
salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was 
no parus, and was too long and too big for the gold- 
en-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest 
willow-wren. It hung -sometimes with its back 
downward, but never continuing one moment in the 
same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory 
that I missed my aim. 
I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius edic- 
nemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a 
rare bird; it abounds in all the champaign parts of 
Hampshire and Sussex. Already they begin clam- 
ouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with 
any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, 
“circa aquas versantes ;” for with us, by day at 
least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland 
fields and sheepwalks, far removed from water ; 
what they may doin the night Icannotsay. Worms 
are their usual food, but they also eat toads and 
frogs.* ; 
* On the 27th of February, 1788, stone curlews were heard to 
pipe; and on March the Ist, after it was dark, some were pass- 
ing over the village, as might be perceived by their quick, short 
note, which they use in their nocturnal excursions by way of 
watchword, that they may not stray and lose their companions. 
Thus we see that, retire whithersoever they may in the winter, 
they return again early in the spring, and are, as it now appears, 
the first summer birds that come back. Perhaps the mildness 
of the season may have quickened the emigration of tke curlews 
this year. 
They spend the day in high, elevated fields ard st eepwalks, 
