124 NATURAL HISTORY 
snipes* make a bleating noise and a drumming 
(perhaps I should have rather said a humming), I 
suspect we mean the same thing. However, while 
they are playing about on the wing, they certainly 
make a loud piping with their mouths; but whether 
that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or pro- 
ceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say ; 
but this I know, that when this noise happens, the 
bird is always descending, and his wings are vio- 
lently agitated. 
Soon after the lapwingst have done hatching, 
they congregate, and, leaving the moors and marsh- 
es, betake themselves to downs and sheepwalks. 
Two years agof last spring the little auk was 
found alive and unhurt, but fluttering and unable 
to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, where 
there isa great lake; it was kept a while, but died. 
I saw young teals) taken alive in the ponds 
Wolmer Forest in the beginning of July last, along 
with flappers, or young wild ducks. 
Speaking of the swift,|| that page says “zt drinks 
the dew ;” whereas it should be, “it drinks on the 
wing ;” for all the swallow kind sip their water as 
they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like 
Virgil’s bees, they drink flying: “flumina summo 
libant.”? In this method of drinking perhaps this 
genus may be peculiar. 
Of the sedgebird,1 be pleased to say it sings 
most part of the night ; its notes are hurrying, but 
not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds, as 
the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens 
to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod 
* British Zoology, Hi ii.,p. 358. . + P\ 260. 9 aes 
m5, 
§ P. 475. q P. 16. 
