LETTER XLIX 



TO THE SAME 



SELBORNE, May 7, 1779. 



IT is now more than forty years that I have paid some 

 attention to the ornithology of this district, without being 

 able to exhaust the subject : new occurrences still arise as 

 long as any inquiries are kept alive. 



In the last week of last month five of those most rare 

 birds, too uncommon to have obtained an English name, 

 but known to naturalists by the terms of himantopus, or 

 loripes, and charadrius himantopus^ were shot upon the 

 verge of Frinsham-pond, a large lake belonging to the Bishop 

 of Winchester, and lying between Woolmer-forest and the 

 town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The pond 

 keeper says there were three brace in the flock ; but, that 

 after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the sixth to 

 remain unmolested. One of these specimens I procured, 

 and found the length of the legs to be so extraordinary, 

 that, at first sight, one might have supposed the shanks 

 had been fastened on to impose on the credulity of the 

 beholder : they were legs in caricatura ; and had we seen 

 such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen we should 

 have made large allowances for the fancy of the draughts- 

 man. These birds are of the plover family, and might with 

 propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that 

 idea, gives them the apposite name of I'echasse. My speci- 



1 The Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus candidus or Himantopus himantopus} 

 is a bird of Southern and South-eastern Europe, and only occurs accidentally in 

 Great Britain, principally in summer (cf. Howard Saunder's "Manual," p. 563). 

 ~[R. B. S.] 



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