48 NATUEAL HISTORY 



The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields 

 last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whis- 

 per of this little bird, which seems to be close by though at 

 an hundred yards distance ; and, when close at your ear, is 

 scarce any louder than when a great way off. Had I not been 

 a little acquainted with insects, and known that the grass- 

 hopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed 

 but that it had been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The 

 country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of 

 a bird. It is a most artful creature, sculking in the thickest 

 part of a bush ; and will sing at a yard distance, provided it 

 be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the 

 other side of the hedge where it haunted ; and then it would 

 run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a hundred yards to- 

 gether, through the bottom of the thorns ; yet it would not 

 come into fair sight : but in a morning early, and when un- 

 disturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering 

 with it's wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge of this 

 bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who appa- 

 rently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which it 

 is very distinct. See Ray"*s Philosophical Letters, p. 108. 



The fly-catcher (stoparola) has not yet appeared : it usually 

 breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing : it's note is 

 short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of 

 June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in 

 a garden, destroying the pease, cherries, currants, &c. ; and 

 are so tame that a gun will not scare them. 



A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this 

 neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the Order in which 



they appear: 



Linnaei Nomina. 



Smallest willow- wren, Motacilla trochilus : 



Wryneck, Jynx torquilla : 



House-swallow, Hirundo rusticu : 



Martin, Hirundo urbica : 



Sand-martin, Hirundo riparia : 



Cuckoo, Cuculus canorus : 



Nightingale, Motacilla luscinia : 



