INTRODUCTION. XVI 
this country, such as Willow Wrens, Whitethroats, and 
Pipits, perform their long journeys by night, as evidenced by 
the numbers which strike against the lighthouses and are 
killed; others, like the Swallows, migrate by day; and 
many instances are on record of their having been ob- 
served en route. Such opportunities in the case of the 
rarer visitants are not so frequently enjoyed. The Hoopoe, 
for example, an irregular spring and autumn migrant, 
rarely occurring in winter, though met with annually in- 
land, has seldom been observed on passage. In the 
English Channel on the 15th April, 1854, a Hoopoe, 
after flying two or three times round the steamer, entered 
one of the windows of the saloon and was taken, apparently 
exhausted with fatigue. Another, on the 21st April, 1853, 
alighted on a mackerel-boat between the Eddystone Lighthouse 
and Plymouth Breakwater, in an exhausted state, and allowed 
itself to be taken. There can be little doubt that this bird 
occasionally nests in England, and would do so more fre- 
quently if unmolested. A pair frequented Gilbert White’s 
Garden at Selborne; and another pair nested for several 
years in the grounds of Pennsylvania Castle, Portland (cf. 
Garland, ‘ Naturalist, 1852, p. 82), According to Mr. 
Turner of Sherborne, Dorsetshire, the nest has been taken 
on three or four occasions by the school-boys from pollard 
willows on the banks of the river at Lenthay. The birds 
were known to the boys as “ hoops.” 
The Roller (p. 34), which is so rare a bird in Scotland, has 
once been procured in Orkney (cf. Saxby, ‘ Zoologist,’ 1871, 
p- 2561). The Red Grouse (p. 39) may be said to be the 
only bird in the British Islands which is peculiar to our 
fauna, unless, indeed, the Scotch Ptarmigan be considered 
specifically distinct from the so-called Willow Grouse. 
Our knowledge of the supposed gular pouch in the male 
b 
