Or 
SYLVIADZE. g 
near St. Audries and Quantock’s Head. In my own 
immediate neighbourhood, and throughout the Vale, 
it is only an accidental visitor, an occasional strag- 
gler making its appearance for a short time about 
the migrating seasons. 
It is a very gay lively bird, having something of 
the manners of the two last-described species, except 
that, instead of bushes and hedge-rows, it delights 
in grassy sheep-walks or sandy rabbit-warrens, in- 
terspersed with large stones and rocks; but like 
them it delights in placing itself in conspicuous 
situations—on a big stone or rock, or even a mole- 
hill. 
The food of the Wheatear consists almost entirely 
of different sorts of insects and their larve, such as 
flies, grasshoppers and beetles. 
The nest is placed in openings and crevices in 
rocks, or in loosely built stone walls, and occasion- 
ally in a rabbit-hole: it is made of moss and 
grass, intermixed with wool, and lined with wool 
or hair. 
The Wheatear may, perhaps more than any other 
bird, be taken as an example of the material change 
which takes place in the plumage immediately after 
the autumnal moult, the broad edgings of the 
feathers at that time entirely altering the appearance 
of the bird. 
The adult Wheatear has the beak black; irides 
dark brown; and on its arrival here, and during the 
