116 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



feathers. Wheatears were formerly caught about the 

 end of summer on the Sussex downs in very large 

 numbers by the shepherds, in very simple though 

 ingenious traps, but, according to Yarrell, it appears 

 that, whereas the selling price for these birds in 

 1802 was one shilling the dozen, in 1872 the price 

 demanded by the Brighton poulterers was three 

 shillings and sixpence. It seems that one great 

 reason of the rise in price is the present comparative 

 scarcity of the birds in consequence of the ploughing- 

 up of the virgin downs and other open places which 

 were formerly their favourite breeding-haunts. At 

 the season at which they are thus taken, the Wheat- 

 ears, chiefly young birds of the year, are generally 

 very fat and certainly most exquisite food, although 

 I believe exclusively insectivorous. 



43. GREAT REED-WARBLER? 



Acrocephalus turdoides ? 



Although my friend Mr. J. E. Harting, in his 

 ' Handbook of British Birds,' includes this bird in 

 the first portion of that work amongst " Residents 

 and Migrants," and designates it as " an occasional 

 summer visitant to England," it appears that more 

 than one of its recorded occurrences in this country 

 are open to doubt, and my only reason for according 

 it a place in this list is that I find in Yarrell's ' British 

 Birds,' 4th ed. vol. i. p. 366, that Mr. John Hancock, 

 of Newcastle-on-Tyne, in a communication to the 

 ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' for 

 August 1847, concerning the occurrence of a bird 

 of this species not far from that town, " mentions 



