PECULIARITIES OF BIRDS. 113 



woodlarks hang poised in the air ; and titlarks rise and fall in 

 large curves, singing in their descent. The white-throat uses 

 odd jerks and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. 

 All the duck kind waddle ; divers and auks walk as if fettered, 

 and stand erect on their tails : these are the compedes of Linnseus. 

 Geese and cranes, and most wild fowls, move in figured nights, 

 often changing their position. The secondary remiges of Tringae, 

 wild ducks, and some others, are very long, and give their wings, 

 when in motion, a hooked appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, 

 and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly 

 make any despatch ; the reason is plain, their wings are placed 

 too forward out of the true centre of gravity ; as the legs of auks 

 and divers are situated too backward. 



LETTER XLIII. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



DEAR SIR, Selborne, Sept. 9, 1778. 



FROM the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to 

 their notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not 

 that I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier, 

 who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between two 

 owls, reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and 

 devastation ; but I would be thought only to mean that many of 

 the winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to 

 express their various passions, wants, and feelings ; such as anger, 

 fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the like. All species are not 



lark, as Mr. White terms it) and the other species of anthus, all of which again strikingly differ 

 from the larks, which advance by short quick steps, and with the tarsal joint much bent. The 

 tree-pipit walks slowly, with somewhat of the gait of a gallinaceous bird ; the common and shore 

 pipits running in the manner of a wagtail. Among walking, or rather running birds, must also 

 be included the blue-throated fantail, or blue-throated redstart, as Mr. Selby and others erro- 

 neously term it, a species which invariably advances with an alternate motion of the feet, and 

 runs very rapidly, whereas all the redstarts hop. The fantail is a bird of beautiful plumage, 

 which as yet has only been once met with in the British Isles, on a wild Northumbrian moor a 

 locality which no redstart would have frequented. It is intermediate in its general character 

 between the redstarts and water-wagtails, which latter it more resembles in habit, much fre- 

 quenting, according to Bechstein, the vicinity of water. A living specimen that 1 once bad an 

 opportunity of watching for a considerable time, in the aviary of Professor Rennic, was much in 

 the habit of widely spreading the tail, at intervals, as it ran about. It was very tame, and would 

 readily take insect food from the hand. This species has rather a pleasing song, some of its 

 notes a little resembling those of the wagtail. It is, however, a single moulting bird, allied to 

 the redstarts, to the chats, and to certain ousels (petrocincla) . A congener to it has lately been 

 detected in the Himmalaya mountains. ED. 

 * See Spectator, Vol. Vll., No. 512. 



