STONE CURLEW. 45 



continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it 

 was so desultory that I missed my aim.* 



I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius (Kdicnemus,^ should 

 be mentioned by the writers as a rare 

 bird: it abounds in all the champaign 

 parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and 

 breeds I think all the summer, having 

 young ones, I know, very late in the 

 autumn. Already they begin clamour- 

 ing in the evening. They cannot, I 

 think, with any propriety, be called, 

 as they are by Mr. Ray, " circa aquas 

 versantes ;" for with us, by day at least, European 



they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep-walks, 

 far removed from water : what they may do in the night I can- 

 not say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads 

 and frogs 4 



I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Lin- 

 naeus perhaps would call the species mus minimus. 



LETTER XVI. To T. PENNANT, ESQ. 

 DEAR SIR, Selborne, April 18, 1768. 



THE history of the stone curlew, charadrius (Rdicnemus, is as 

 follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on 

 the bare ground, without any nest, in the field; so that the 

 countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The 

 young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c., and 

 are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they 



* I know of no kind that will correspond altogether with this description. It certainly was not 

 that lovely-plumaged species, the bearded pinnock (calamophilus biarmicus), as captain Brown 

 strangely imagines, in his edition of this work, for that bird has no " yellow-green colour" about 

 it : nor would it appear to be either of the summer warblers, the time of the year precluding this 

 supposition ^besides which, none of them ever hang with the back downwards. By the term 

 Mlicaria, Mr. White evidently intends the pettychaps, or " willow-wren" genus (sylvia, as now 

 limited}, and not the reedlings, or "aquatic warblers," which in modern nomenclature are 

 designated by that name. ED. 



t European thicknee, ccdiciiemvs Europaus- ED. 



t Likewise small mammifers, which the bustards, also, and the different poultry tribes, are 

 not very scrupulous about swallowing, the common fowl being quite an adept at catching mice. 

 Sir W. Jardine has even taken a field-mouse from the stomach of a meadow-crake, or "land- 

 rail" (cre.r pratensis). In the stomachs of the vdienemi I have chiefly found the remains of 

 various beetles ED. 



