102 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through.* 



Wagtails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter.f 



Bullfinches,t when fed on hempseed, often become wholly black. 



We have vast flocks of female chaffinches all the winter, with 

 hardly any males among them. 



When you say that in breeding-time the cock snipes make a 

 bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should have rather 

 said an 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 humming 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. 



Soon after the lapwings || have done breeding they congregate, 

 and, leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs 

 and sheep-walks. 



Two years ago ^1 last spring the little auk was found alive and 

 unhurt, but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from 

 Alresford, where there is a great lake : it was kept a while, but 

 died. 



I saw young teals** taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in 

 the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild-ducks. 



Speaking of the swift, ft that page says "its drink the dew;" 

 whereas it should be "it drinks on the wing ;" for all the swallow 

 kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers : 

 like Virgil's bees, they drink flying ; "flumina siimma libant" In 

 this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 



Of the sedge-bird JJ be pleased to say it sings most part of the 

 night ; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of 

 several birds ; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens 

 to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes 

 where it sits you immediately set it a-singing ; or in other words, 

 though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it 

 reassumes its song. 



caused this assertion ; a straggling whin-chat may remain , but will form the exception. Mr. 

 Yarrell is aware of only two authentic instances. Of the wheat-ear we are still more in 

 doubt. See letter to Harrington, No. XVII. These remarks are again repeated, Letter 

 XLI., but there we again suspect the stone-chat mistaken for whin-chat. 



* See Letter XIII., and note. 



t British Zoology, VD!. i., p. 300. J p. 306. p. 358. 



|| p. 360. If p. 409. ** p. 475. tt p. 15. U p. 16. 



