OF SELBORNE. 167 



When you say that in breeding time the cock snipes 21 

 make a bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I 

 should have rather said a humming), I suspect we 

 mean the same thing. However, while they are playing 

 about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping 

 with their mouths : but whether that bleating or hum- 

 ming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the motion of 

 their wings, I cannot say ; but this I know, that when 

 this noise happens the bird is always descending, and 

 his wings are violently agitated 22 . 



Soon after the lapwings 23 have done breeding, they 

 congregate, and, leaving the moors and marshes, betake 

 themselves to downs and sheep-walks. 



Two years ago last spring the little auk 24 was found 



several years living in my room, known in the London shops by the name 

 of bishop birds. Numbers of one of these two species have been im- 

 ported of late years, and in the summer time they become orange and 

 black, but the imported skins have invariably the plumage scarlet and 

 black. If they are kept in a very cool and airy room in this country, 

 they do not acquire their perfect plumage, which they retain five or six 

 months in a warmer situation. The different colour of the foreign spe- 

 cimens I attribute chiefly to a higher temperature. The second sort, 

 which is rarely imported, is of a bright yellow and black, but quite a 

 different species. W. H. 



21 British Zoology, vol. ii. p. 358. 



22 I have observed the drumming of snipes in bright days at the begin- 

 ning of April, and I could very clearly discern the manner in which the 

 sound is produced. After rising high and crying peet, peet, peet, which 

 is the snipe's vernal note, it lets itself drop obliquely through the air, 

 keeping the wings motionless, but turning by some muscular contraction 

 each individual quill sideways in the same manner that the bars of a 

 Venetian blind are turned to admit more light, and having descended to 

 the customary point, it readjusts its feathers and rises again obliquely 

 without sound. They will continue for hours together amusing them- 

 selves in this manner upon a mild day, and when they are in this mood 

 the sportsman has very little chance of getting near them. The cushat 

 has a sportive movement a little similar, in the summer time, in the 

 narrow wooded valleys amongst the hills : it is less observed in flat 

 countries. It descends obliquely without any motion of the wings, and 

 when it has dived to the usual point of descent, flaps its wings with a 

 loud noise and towers again obliquely to the other side of the valley. 

 W. H. 



23 British Zoology, vol. ii. p. 360. 24 p. 409. 



