40 SUMMER BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 



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, &c. and 

 are so tame that a gun will not scare them. 



A. List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this neighbour- 

 hood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear. 



LINNJEI NOMINA. 



Smallest willow-wren, . . Motacilla trochilus. 



Wry-neck, . . . Yunx torquilla. 



House-swallow, . . Hirundo rustica. 



Marten, . . Hirundo urbica. 



Sand-marten, . . Hirundo riparia. 



Cuckoo, . . . Cuculus canorusy 



Nightingale, . . . Motacilla luscinia. 



Black-cap, . . . Motacilla atricapilla, 



White-throat, . . . Motacilla sylvia. 



Middle willow-wren, . . Motacilla trochilus. 



Swift, . . . Hirundo apus. 



Stone-curlew ? . . Charadrius oedicnemus ? 



Turtle-dove? . . . Turtur aldrovandi 9 f 



Grasshopper lark, . . . Alauda trivialis. 



Landrail, . . . Rallus crex. 



Largest willow-wren, . Motacilla trocMua. 



Redstart, . . . Motacilla phcenicurus. 



Goat-sucker, or fern-owl, . Caprimulyus europmus. 



Fly-catcher, . . . Muscicapa grisola. 



My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter 

 with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling 

 it ajar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact ; it 

 proved to be the sitta europcea (the nuthatch.) Mr Ray says, 



* Bechstein says the song of the redstart, sylvia phcemcurus, is 

 lively and agreeable. " One which had built its nest under my house," 

 says he, " imitated very exactly the note of a chaffinch I had in a cage in 

 the window ; and my neighbour had another in his garden, which 

 repeated all the notes of the fauvette." 



It arrives in this country early in April, and o^iits us again in the end 

 of September ; an instance is, however, recorded, in LOUDON*S Magazine, 

 of a female having been seen on the cliff "called Dumpton Stairs, in the 

 Isle of Thanet, on Christmas day, 1830. En. 



f Our author, in placing a note of interrogation after this species, 

 seems to doubt its being one of our migratory birds. The turtle dove, 

 Columba turtur, of Linnaeus, is common enough in the southern counties 

 of England ; arriving in the end of April or beginning of May, and 

 departing in September. It has lately been met with as far north as 

 Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Bewick mentions a flock of them which visited 



