84 WHITE 



NOTES 



1 The red-backed butcher-bird, or shrike, is common enough in some dis- 

 tricts. I found several nests one year in some thorn-trees in a small field 

 in Norfolk. The shrike has a habit of impaling the beetles or other small 

 live creatures it feeds upon, on the thorns, to await its convenience for eat- 

 ing them, and some spots have quite the appearance of a well-stocked larder. 

 G. C. D. 



2 The stock-dove is not the common wild pigeon. The pigeons usually 

 found in England are the ring-dove, which makes its nests on trees, and is 

 called the cushat, or in Shropshire the qutce, the stock-dove, which breeds 

 in holes in trees, and also in rabbit holes ; the rock-dove, and the pretty 

 little turtle-dove, which builds so slight a nest in a tree or big bush that the 

 small white eggs can be seen through it from below. G. C. D. 



8 Whin-chats migrate, but stone-chats do not as a rule. G. C. D. 

 4 The yellow-wagtail migrates, but the pied and gray wagtails do not. 

 G. C. D. 



LETTER XL 



SELBORNE, Sept. 2nd, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, Before your letter arrived, and of my own 

 accord, I had been remarking and comparing the tails of the 

 male and female swallow, and this ere any young broods ap- 

 peared ; so that there was no danger of confounding the dams 

 with their pulli: and besides, as they were then always in 

 pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be 

 no room for mistaking the sexes, nor the individuals of differ- 

 ent chimneys the one for the other. From all my observations, 

 it constantly appeared that each sex has the long feathers in 

 its tail that give it that forked shape; with this difference, 

 that they are longer in the tail of the male than in that of the 

 female. 



Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and are 

 helpless, make a plaintive and jarring noise ; and also a snap- 

 ping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they 

 walk: these last sounds seem intended for menace and de- 

 fiance. 



The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of 

 summer. 



Swans turn white the second year, and breed the third. 



