96 SING-OUSELS. 



Birds tliat siug in the night are but few : 



T . . J" " In shadiest covert hid." 



Nightingale, Lusama. j MILTON. 



Woodlark, Alauda arborea. Suspended in mid air. 



Less reed-sparrow, ^ ^8 minor. ^ ' I Amon g reeds and willows. 



I should now proceed to such birds as continue to sing 

 after midsummer ; but as they are rather numerous, the^ 

 would exceed the bounds of this paper ; besides, as this 

 is now the season for remarking on that subject, I am 

 willing to repeat my observations on some birds, concerning 

 the continuation of whose song I seem at present to have 

 some doubt. 



LETTEE XXVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, Aug. 30, 1769. 



DEAR SIB, It gives me satisfaction to find that my account 

 of the ousel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd 

 question when you ask me how I know that their autumnal 

 migration is southward. Were not candour and openness 

 the very life of natural history, I should pass over this query 

 just as a sly commentator does over a crabbed passage in a 

 classic ; but common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, 

 not without some degree of shame, that I only reasoned in 

 that case from analogy. For, as all other autumnal birds 

 migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our milder 

 winters, and return to the northward again, when the 

 rigorous cold abates, so I concluded that the ring-ousels did 

 the same, as well as their congeners, the fieldfares ; and 

 especially as ring-ousels are known to haunt cold mountain- 

 ous countries : but I have good reason to suspect since, that 

 they may come to us from the westward ; because I hear 

 from very good authority, that they breed on Dartmoor ; 

 and that they forsake that wild district about the time that 

 our visitors appear, and do not return till late in the spring. 



