NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 63 



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 1 began his sibilous note in my 

 fields last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than 

 the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by 

 though at an 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 insects, and known 

 that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I should 

 have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta whisper- 

 ing in the bushes. The country people laugh when you 

 tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful 

 creature, sculking in the thickest part of a bush ; and will 

 sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was 

 obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the 

 hedge where it haunted, and then it would run, creeping 

 like a mouse, before us for an hundred yards together, 

 through the bottom of the thorns ; yet it would not come 

 into fair sight : but in a morning early, and when un- 

 disturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shiver- 

 ing with its wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge 

 of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, 

 who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, 

 from which it is very distinct. See Ray's "Philosophical 

 Letters" p. io8. 2 



1 The Grasshopper Warbler (Locustella n<evta).[R. B. S.] 



2 As Professor Newton has pointed out in Bell's edition (vol. i. p. 49), 

 Linnaeus did not know the ' Grasshopper Lark ' ; and the name of Alauda 

 trivialis applies to the Tree-Pipit. Seebohm (Hist. Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 340) 

 observes that the specimen sent to Willoughby and Ray by Mr. Johnson of Greta 

 Bridge, in Yorkshire, was certainly, from the description, a Grasshopper Warbler, 

 " but the habits of the bird described resemble most those of the Wood Warbler. 

 Possibly Mr. Johnson confounded the notes of the two species together : " hence 

 White's observation ! [R. B. S.] 



