46 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



sculk among the stones, which are their best security; for 

 their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our grey spotted 

 flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of 

 the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round ; 

 of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody botches. Though I 

 might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, 

 yet I could shew you them almost any day ; and any evening you 

 may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which 

 may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive 

 name for them, since their legs seem swoln like those of a gouty man. 

 After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields.* 



I make no doubt but there are three 

 species of the willow- wrens : two I 

 know perfectly; but have not been 

 able yet to procure the third. No 

 two birds can differ more in their 

 notes, and that constantly, than those 

 two that I am acquainted with; for 

 the one has a joyous, easy, laughing 

 note ; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is eveiy way 

 larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two 

 drams and a half ; while the latter weighs but two : so the 

 songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being 

 the first summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck 

 sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, 

 and continues them through the spring and summer till the end 

 of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of 

 these two are flesh-coloured ; of the less, black. 



The grasshopper-lark began his 

 sibilous note in my fields last Satur- 

 day. Nothing can be more amusing 

 than the whisper of this little bird, 

 which seems to be close by though at 

 a hundred yards distance ; and, when 

 close at your ear, is scarce any louder 

 than when a great way off. Had I 

 not been a little acquainted with in- Brake 



* It is only the young of the year which have the upper part of the tarse so much swollen, a* 

 i the case indeed with the young of all running birds. This species is very rarely found except- 

 ing on chalk, though I know of one instance of an immature bird having been shot on the "New 

 red sand-stone" stratum, in Worcestershire, which, from its youth, must evidently have been bred 

 in the neighbourhood. In Svrrey they occur every where upon the chalky lands ; I have hod 

 specimens from Banstiad downs. ED. 



