140 'The Natural History of Selborne 



A great ash-coloured * butcher-bird was shot last winter 

 in Tisted Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne : 

 they are rarce aves in this county. 



Crows -f- go in pairs all the year round. 



Cornish choughs]; abound, and breed on Beechy Head, 

 and on all the cliffs of the Sussex coast. 



The common wild-pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of 

 passage in the south of England, seldom appearing till 

 towards the end of November; is usually the latest winter- 

 bird of passage. Before our beechen woods were so much 

 destroyed, we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for 

 a mile together as they went out in a morning to feed. 

 They leave us early in spring : where do they breed ? 



The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird || 

 the storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring in blow- 

 ing showery weather ; its song often commences with the year : 

 with us it builds much in orchards. 



A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring- 

 ousels IF on Dartmoor : they build in banks on the sides 

 of streams. 



Titlarks ** not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but 

 also as they play and toy about on the wing ; and particularly 

 while they are descending, and sometimes as they stand on 

 the ground. 1 



Adanson's -f- -f- testimony seems to me to be a very poor 

 evidence that European swallows migrate during our winter 

 to Senegal : he does not talk at all like an ornithologist ; and 

 probably saw only the swallows of that country, which I 

 know build within Governor O'Hara's hall against the roof. 

 Had he known European swallows, would he not have men- 

 tioned the species ? 



* " British Zoology," vol. i. p. 161. f Vol. i. p. 167. J Vol. i. p. 198. 

 Vol. i. p. 216. || Vol. i. p. 224. IT Vol. i. p. 229. * * Vol. i. p. 237. 

 1 1 Vol. i. p. 242. 



1 This is true of the tree-pipit, Anthus trivialis, not of the common 

 titlark or meadow-pipit, A. pratensis, two birds which White apparently 

 confuses. ED. 



