38 STONE CURLEW. 



I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus. 

 should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird : it abounds 

 in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and 

 breeds, 1 think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, 

 very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in 

 the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be 

 called, as they are by Mr Ray, "circa aquas versantes ;" for 

 with us (by day at least) they haunt only the most dry, open, 

 upland fields and sheep-walks, far removed from water : what 

 they may do in the night 1 cannot say. Worms are their usual 

 food, but they also eat toads and frogs. 



I can shew you some good specimens of my new mice, 

 Linnseus, perhaps, w r ould call the species mus minimus. 



LETTER XVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, April 18, 1768. 



DEAR SIR, The history of the stone curlew, charadrius 

 oedicnemus, is as follows : It lays its eggs, usually two, never 

 more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the 

 field, so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often 

 destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg 

 like partridges, &c. and are withdrawn to some flinty field by 

 the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their 

 best security ; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour 

 of our grey spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless 

 he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The 

 eggs are short and round, of a dirty white, spotted with dark 

 bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I 

 pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could shew you them 

 almost any day ; and any evening you may hear them round 

 the village ; for they make a clamour which may be heard a 

 mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, 

 since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. 

 After harvest, I have shot them before the pointers in turnip 

 fields. 



I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow- 

 wrens ;* two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet to 



* These are the wood-wren, s. sibilatrix, the hay bird, s. trochilus, 

 and the chiff-chaff, s. hippolais, the latter of which generally appears 

 in this country in the end of April. Mr Sweet says, the chiff-chaff soon 

 becomes familiar in confinement! ; so much so, that one he captured took a 

 fly out of his hand in three or four days, and " learnt to drink milk out 



