of Selborne 43 



than the chirper. 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 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 locvsta whispering 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, skulking 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 a 

 hundred yards together, through the bottom of the 

 thorns \ yet it would not come into fair sight : but in a 

 morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the top 

 of a twig, gaping and shivering 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 cristaii^ from which it is very distinct. 

 See Ray's Philosophical Letters^ p. io8. 



The fly-catcher {stoparold) has not yet appeared : it 

 usually breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing : 

 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 pease, cherries, 

 currants, etc.; and are so tame that a gun will not scare them. 



