86 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



since, that, on recollection, he has seen some of the sam 

 birds round his ponds in former summers. 



The next bird that I procured (on the 2ist of May) w< 

 a male red-backed butcher-bird, lanius collurio. My neigl 

 bour, who shot it, says that it might easily have escaped h 

 notice, had not the outcries and chattering of the whiti 

 throats and other small birds drawn his attention to tt 

 bush where it was ; it's craw was filled with the legs an 

 wings of beetles. 



The next rare birds (which were procured for me la 

 week) were some ring-ousels, turdi torquati. 



This week twelve months a gentleman from London 

 being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and foun 

 he told us, on an old yew hedge where there were berrii 

 some birds like blackbirds, with rings of white round the 

 necks : a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observe 

 the same ; but, as no specimens were procured, little noti< 

 was taken. I mentioned this circumstance to you in n 

 letter of November the 4th, 1767 : (you however paid b 

 small regard to what I said, as I had not seen these bir 

 myself) ; but last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a larj 

 flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks at 

 two hens : and says, on recollection, that he remembers 

 have observed these birds again last spring, about Lady-dt 

 as it were, on their return to the north. Now perhaps the 

 ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, b 

 belong to the more northern parts of Europe;* and m 

 retire before the excessive rigor of the frosts in those part 

 and return to breed in the spring, when the cold abat< 

 i 



1 In the original letter : " My brother from Fleet Street [Pennant's publish 

 Benjamin White] being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, &c." [K. B. 



2 The Ring-ousel (Merula torquata} is a bird of the fells in summer, 

 nests on the moors in the west and north of England, and in Scotland : 

 Ireland. The birds observed by Gilbert White were not likely to be those wh 

 had nested on the moors of Dorsetshire or Wales, as there is no evidence o 

 west-to-east migration in the Ring-ousel, and the numbers I saw in Heligoh 

 in 1876 came from the north and flew due south when they were disturbed. 1 

 Ring-ousels doubtless come to visit Selborne in the autumn on their south 

 migration just as they visit Brighton, and at the same season they occur 

 Central Europe and winter in the Mediterranean countries. [R. B. S.] 



