168 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



Whin-chats and stone-chatters^ stay with us the whole 

 year. 



Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through. 2 

 Wagtails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter. 3 

 Bullfinches, 4 when fed on hempseed, often become 

 wholly black. 



We have vast flocks of female chaffinches 5 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 7 have done breeding they 



1 British Zoology, vol. i. pp. 270, 271. [G. W.] The Whin-chat (Pratincola 

 rubetra) is never found in England in winter, being a thorough migrant. The 

 Stone-chat (P. mbicola) is a partial migrant. Many remain during the winter 

 in the southern counties, and I saw several on the hedges in the Alton Road in 

 November 1899, during my visits to Selborne in that year. [R. B. S.] 



2 British Zoology, p. 269. [G. W.] See Letter XIII and note. [R. B. S.] 



3 British Zoology, vol. i. p. 299. [G. W.] See (antea) note, p. 52. [R. B. S.] 



4 British Zoology, vol. i. p. 300. [G. W.] 



5 British Zoology, p. 306. [G. W.] See (antea) note, p. 51. Mr. Harting is 

 quite right. In order to settle this question, which I fancied I had solved in the 

 " Catalogue of Birds," I have had numbers of Chaffinches sent to me by Mr. 

 Brazenor of Brighton during the present winter of 1899-1900. The instructions 

 given by me to the bird-catchers on the Downs were to send the results of 

 various catches in the nets. I have received in every case numbers of male 

 and female chaffinches caught at the same "pull" of the net, the females 

 perhaps slightly predominating. On every occasion the sexual organs have been 

 examined at the Natural History Museum by Mr. Pycraft, Mr. Ogilvie Grant, 

 and myself, and among the females there has never been one instance of a young 

 male in the plumage of the hen. My previous statement (p. 51, note), that the 

 male assumes the full plumage at its first autumn moult, has been fully confirmed 

 by these recent observations. [R. B. S.] 



British Zoology, voL i. p. 358. [G. W.] Ibid., p. 360. [G. W.] 



