CHAPTER V. 



Rarer Birds visitors to the Isle of Wight Spoon-bill Red- 

 necked Phalarope Bittern Gannet White-fronted 

 (Laughing) Goose Slack Redstart Common Ditto 

 Hoopoe Snow Bunting Girl Bunting Brambling 

 Merlin Hobby Grossbeak Wryneck Grasshopper 

 Warbler Stone Curlew Dotterel Ring Dotterel and 

 Ox-bird Grey PloverGolden Plover Protest against 

 killing rare Birds. 



A MONG the rarer birds which have come 

 within my own knowledge as visitors to the 

 Isle of Wight are the following : 



The Spoonbill. The Red-necked Phalarope 

 (Phalaropus hyperboreus). The Bittern (at least 

 two instances). The Gannet; one of these birds 

 was in December, 1853, after a storm of unusual 

 violence, found by some boys going to plough at 

 a distance of several miles from the sea : it was 

 unable to fly more than a short distance, and they 

 soon ran it down, when they "disarmed the 

 terrors of its beak" by running a knife into its 

 throat. Another of these birds had been, singu- 



