GRASSHOPPER LARK. 39 



procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their 

 notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted 

 with j for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note, the other 

 a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and 

 three quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drachms and 

 a half, while the latter weighs but two ; so that the songster 

 is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the 

 first summer bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck some- 

 times 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 scarcely 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 locusta 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 an 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 Johnston, who 

 apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which 

 it is very distinct. See Ray's Philosophical Letters, p. 108. 



The fly-catcher (stoparola) has not yet appeared : it usually 

 breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing : its note is 



of a tea-spoon, of which it was so fond, that it would fly after it all round 

 the room, and perch on the hand that held it, without shewing the least 

 symptoms of fear ; it would fly up to the ceiling, and bring down a fly in 

 its mouth every time. At last it got so tame, that it would sit on my 

 knee at the fire, and sleep." ED. 



* The grasshopper warbler, sylvia locustella of Latham. It is quite 

 distinct in habits and character from the lark genus ; it is destitute of 

 the long claw behind ; it resides in thickets, and is incapable of running 

 on the ground like a lark ; its progressive movement consists of hopping. 

 It frequents low and damp situations, ED. 



