40 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a 

 bird. It is a most artful creature, sculking 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. Johnson, who apparently confounds it 

 with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct. See Ray's 

 " Philos. 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 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 peas, 

 cherries, currants, &c. ; and are so tame that a gun will not scare 

 them. 



A LIST OF THE SUMMER BIRDS OP PASSAGE DISCOVERED IN THIS 

 NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED SOMEWHAT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH 

 THEY APPEAR. 



LINN^EI NOMINA. 



Smallest willow-wren, Motuciila trochilus. 



Wryneck, Jynx torquilla. 



House-swallow, Hirundo rustica. 



Martin, Hirundo urbica. 



Sand-martin, Hirundo riparia. 



Cuckoo, Cueulus canorus. 



Nightingale, Motacilla luscinia. 



Blackcap, Motacilla atricapiila. 



Whitethroat, Motacilla sylvia. 



Middle willow -wren, Mofacitta trochilus. 



Swift, Hirundo apus. 



Stone-curlew? Charadrius adicnemut ? 



Turtle-dove? Turtur aldrovandi? 



Grasshopper-lark, Alauda trivialis. 



Landrail, Rallus crex. 



Largest willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus. 



Redstart, Motacilla phanicurus. 



Goat-sucker, or fern-owl, Caprimulgus europaus. 



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 europaa (the nuthatch.) Mr. Eay says that the less spotted 



* This passage in Ray's correspondence (Ray Society, p. 96), to which the 

 above alludes, appears to occur in one of Mr. Johnson's letters to Ray, March 

 1672, and refers to the grasshopper-warbler, Salicana locuslella, and which is 

 White's ' ' grasshopper-lark, " it is as follows : " I have sent you the little yellow-bird 

 you called ngulus non cristaius, what bird it is I know not ; but we have great 

 store of them (Brignall, Greta Bridge), each morning about sunrise, and many 

 times a-day ; besides she mounts to the highest branch in the bush, and there 

 with bill erect, and wing hovering, she sends forth a sibilous noise like that of the 

 grasshopper, but much shriller." (See also Letter XXIV.) 



