THE BUNTINGS AND WAGTAILS. 37 



known, at least, that the swallows and the fieldfares do con- 

 gregate with a gentle twittering before they make their respective 

 departure. 



You may depend on it that the 

 bunting, emberiza miliaria, does not 

 leave this country in the winter. In 

 January, 1/67, 1 saw several dozen 

 of them, in the midst of a severe frost, 

 among the bushes on the downs 

 near Andover. In our woodland-en- 

 closed district it is a rare bird.* 



Wagtails, both white and yellow,f 



are with us all the winter. Quails crowd to our southern coast, 

 and are often killed in numbers by people that go on purpose. 



Mr Stillingfleet, in his tracts, says that, " if the wheatear 

 (vinanihe) does not quit England, it certainly shifts places ; for 

 about harvest they are not to be found, where there was before 



* The "common" or corn-bunting (emberiza miliaria) is plentiful enough throughout the year 

 in Surrey, and most parts of the south of .England, frequenting the arable lands. Mr. Knapp 

 says of it, " I witnessed this morning a rick of barley entirely stripped of its thatching, which 

 the bunting had effected, by seizing the end of the straw and deliberately drawing it out, to search 

 for any grain that might yet remain. The sparrow and other birds will burrow in the stack and 

 pilfer the corn ; but the deliberate operation of unroofing the edifice appears to be peculiar to 

 this bunting." ED. 



t By " yellow" Mr. White here evidently intends the gray-wagtail of the books (motacilla 

 einerea, boarula of Linnaeus), a species partly yellow, but which in general ronly appears in the 

 southern counties during the winter, and of which no instance that I am aware of has been 

 hitherto recorded of its having been known to breed in the south of England. 1 once, however, 

 observed a pair of them upon Penge-common, Kent, at the end of May, that evidently had a nest 

 in the neighbourhood, though 1 was unsuccessful in my repeated endeavours to find it. The 

 ommon field - wagtail .(motacilla-budytes flavissima) , or "yellow-wagtail" of most writers, but 

 which is now with propriety arranged in a separate minimum division, invariably migrates, a 

 fact of which (independently of their disappearance) 1 have the best possible evidence, having 

 noticed a small flock of them, early one morning in September, upon the sands in the isle of 

 Jersey, which had apparently not long alighted from a journey across the channel, and had pro- 

 bably taken their departure from some part of the west of EnglSnd. They re-appear ;in the 

 southern counties about April. An allied continental species, the blue-headed field-wagtail 

 (motacilla'budytes neglecta) t differing considerably in the colour of its head, but otherwise very 

 similar to the flavissima, has lately been detected by Mr. Doubleday, in Essex, the attention of 

 that gentleman having been aroused by observing a pair of them in the month of October, some 

 time after the common kind had left the country, from which, indeed, it would seem, that the 

 motacilla-budytes neglecta departs later in the season. Both are handsome, but songless birds, 

 in which latter they differ from the more typical -motadllif (of which our common pied species 

 may be considered a characteristic example), which do sing a little. They differ also in their 

 habits, frequenting corn-fields and enclosures rather than the vicinity of water, and generally 

 abound very much where sheep are pastured. The general character of their colouring is different, 

 and they have the long hind claw and very much the form and manners of the typical pipits 

 {nnthus}, to which genus they are considerably allied. All these birds undergo two general 

 changes of feather in the year. The field-wagtail's summer garb is merely much brighter than 

 that of winter; but the summer plumage of all the typical motacilla! exhibits a black throat, and 

 their winter dress a white one (as in many of their plovers), besides which they otherwise more 

 or less differ, according to the species. ED. 



