138 The Natural History of Selborne 



hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a plough and devouring 

 a fish : it used to precipitate itself into the water, and so take its 

 prey by surprise. 



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

 Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne : they are rar<e 

 aves in this county. 



Crows t go in pairs all the year round. 



Cornish choughs J 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 mile a 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 blowing 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 ^[ 

 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 t 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 mentioned the species ? 



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

 Vol. i. p. 216. || Vol. i. p. 224. H Vol. i. p. 229. ** Vol. ii. p. 237. 

 1 1 Vol. ii. p. 24.2. 



1 This is true of the tree-pipit, dntkus trivia/is, not of the common titlark 

 or meadow-pipit, A. fratensis, two birds which White apparently confuses. ED. 



