NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 65 



its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about 

 the middle of June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) 

 are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas, cherries, 

 currants, &c. ; and are so tame that a gun will not scare 

 them. 



My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a 

 clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old 

 pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in 

 the very fact ; it proved to be the sitta europcsa (the nut- 

 hatch}. Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodpecker 

 does the same. This noise may be heard a furlong or 

 more. 1 



Now is the only time to ascertain the short-winged 

 summer birds ; for, when the leaf is out, there is no 

 making any remarks on such a restless tribe ; and, when 

 once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion ; there 

 is no distinction of genus, species, or sex. 



In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping 

 and humming : they always hum as they are descending. 

 Is not their hum ventriloquous like that of the turkey ? 

 Some suspect it is made by their wings. 2 



1 The jarring noise produced by the Greater and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers 

 (Dendrocopus major and D. minor'] is often to be heard in the south of England in 

 the spring, and carries a great distance. It is brought about by the rapid hammer- 

 ing on slender boughs at the top of some hollow poplar or elm, and appears to be 

 a call-note from one bird to another, as it is immediately answered by a second 

 individual from some distant tree. I have often heard the birds do this in the 

 park-land near Cookham, in Berkshire, but I never heard a Nuthatch (Sitta ccesia), 

 which is a common enough species in the neighbourhood, signal in the same 

 manner. The hammer-like strokes of the latter bird can be heard a long way off, 

 but they consist of the deliberate tapping and hacking of the bark, not the vibrating 

 ' whirr ' which the woodpeckers produce when they signal to each other. The 

 rasping sound made by the prising off of the bark by the vigorous little Nuthatch 

 can also be heard for some distance from the tree where it is at work. The large 

 size of some of the pieces of bark which fall to the ground could scarcely be 

 believed to be the achievement of such a small bird. [R. B. S.] 



2 Some naturalists have declared that the drumming is produced by the wings, 

 or by the tail-feathers, while others affirm that the effect proceeds from the bird's 

 throat. The balance of contemporary observation is in favour of the former theory. 

 [R. B. S.] 



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