66 SANDPIPER. 



two flesh-coloured ones. The yellowest bird is 

 considerably the largest, and has its quill feathers 

 and secondary feathers tipped with white, which 

 the others have not. This last haunts only the 

 tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes 

 a sibilous grasshopper-like noise now and then, 

 at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings 

 when it sings ; and is, I make no doubt now, the 

 regulus non cristatus of Ray; which he says, 

 " cantat voce striduld locusta V Yet this great 

 ornithologist never suspected that there were three 

 species. 



XX. 



IT is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany ; all 

 nature is so full, that that district produces the 

 greatest variety which is the most examined. 

 Several birds, which are said to belong to the 

 north only, are, it seems, often in the south. I 

 have discovered this summer three species of 

 birds with us, which writers mention as only to 

 be seen in the northern counties. The first that 

 was brought me (on the 14th of May) was the 

 sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus ; it was a cock bird, 

 and haunted the banks of some ponds near the 

 village ; and, as it had a companion, doubtless 

 intended to have bred near that water. Besides, 

 the owner has told me since, that, on recollection, 

 he has seen some of the same birds round his 

 ponds in former summers 2 . 



1 Without doubt, sylvia sibilatrix. or wood-wren. 

 W. J. 



2 This species, the totanus hypoleucus of modern orni- 

 thologists, is most abundant on all the rocky brooks in the 

 north of England and Scotland, arriving to breed early in 

 spring, and in autumn again retiring to our coasts, in small 



