46 NATUKAL HISTORY 



Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. 

 The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by 

 that fierce weather in January. 



In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a 

 little bird that raised my curiosity : it was of that yellow- 

 green colour that belongs to the salicaria kind, and, I think, 

 was soft-billed. It was no parus ; and was too long and too 

 big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the 

 largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with it's back down- 

 wards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. 

 I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. 



I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, 

 should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds 

 in all the campaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and 

 breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, 

 very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in 

 the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be 

 called, as they are by Mr. Ray, " circa aquas ver sanies-" for 

 with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, 

 upland fields and sheep walks, far removed from water. What 

 they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their 

 usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs. 



I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. 

 Linnceus, perhaps, would call the species mus minimus. 



LETTER XVI. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, April 18, 1768, 



DEAR SIR, 



THE history of the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, is as 

 follows. It lays it's eggs, usually two, never more than three, 

 on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field ; so that the 

 countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The 

 young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c. 

 and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where 



