WHINCHAT. 345 



and arrives in the northern counties by the end of that 

 month. Its call-note resembles the word 'u-tick,' and in 

 some districts gives the bird a local name. The song is 

 agreeable, generally uttered from the topmost twig of a bush, 

 or while fluttering in the air. Like most song-birds, it is, 

 in captivity, prone to imitate the notes of others. Its food 

 is worms, insects, small mollusks and berries. 



The nest, generally placed on the ground, either in a 

 furze-bush or in the grass of a hay-field, is formed with a 

 little moss and bents of grass, lined with finer bents ; the eggs 

 are five or six, of a bluish-green, suffused or closely mottled 

 with fine specks, which are occasionally confluent, of pale 

 reddish-brown, and measure from "77 to "68 by from '68 to 

 •53 in. Mr. Jenyns says the young are hatched towards the 

 end of May, and two broods are produced in the season. 



Without being a common bird, some particular districts 

 and seasons excepted, the Whinchat is generally diffused 

 throughout the three kingdoms, breeding occasionally in Corn- 

 wall and regularly in some part of every other county of Great 

 Britain, as also it is believed probably to do in every Irish 

 county, though there rare and local. It is occasionally seen 

 in Orkney, but has not yet been recorded from Shetland. 

 It has once occurred, and then in December, in the Faeroes. 

 In Norway the Messrs. Godman found a few breeding at 

 Bodo, and Wolley ascertained that it did the like at least a 

 degree further northward on the frontiers of Sweden and 

 Finland.* Herr Meves noticed it as far as Archangel, and if 

 is said to be common in Southern Russia as far as the Ural 

 Mountains, though not to occur in Siberia. Menetries 

 observed it in Caucasia and De Filippi in Western Persia. 

 Mr. Hume has received it from several parts of the Punjab. 

 Strickland observed it to be common at Smyrna in winter, 

 and it is said to be resident in Greece, but in Palestine and 

 Egypt it is a bird of passage on its way to and from its 

 winter-quarters in Arabia, Abyssinia and Kordofan. Mr. 

 Chambers-Hodgetts observed it in Tripoli, and it is common 



"■ Linna?us says it goes to Spitsbergen, Imt no recent traveller confinu.s the 



