296 Miscellanea, Correspondence, &c, by Mr. Jas. Hardy 



large assemblage of swallows, my informant could not 

 testify to the species, was seen over that town, flying high 

 in the air, and wheeling round and twittering, preparatory 

 to leaving, and apparently congratulating each other with 

 the success of their visit, and overjoyed once more to be 

 recalled to their mysterious winter home. At Oldcambus 

 they did not depart till October 6th, but it was probably a 

 party of late nestlings, whose retreat had been delayed. 



Whitethroat. — The Whitethroat is popularly known as 

 the "Whushie-whey-beard" and "Jenny Cut-throat." When 

 irritated or disturbed, the ruffled feathers about its throat 

 make it appear goitred, or as if it had once attempted a felo 

 de se. When it arrives early in May, it diverts itself for a 

 time before fixing on a nesting place. You see one dancing 

 a jig in the air at one end of an open glen, two or three in 

 the middle of it, and where you make exit from the 

 thoroughfare another is practising its restless song and 

 irrepressible antics. When you approach its chosen bush 

 in a hedge, how rapidly it winds itself downwards through 

 the interlacing intricacy of twigs and branches to the bot- 

 tom, at the point furthest from the spectator ; slips out in a 

 low flight up the side of the hedge, and when it is sufficiently 

 far beyond his reach, whips over the hedge and hides its- 

 self, soon again to renew its pranks on its new practice 

 ground ! It is of bad repute, being accused of sucking the 

 eggs of other small birds ; but it is to be hoped that this is 

 fabulous. It is a pert, prying little creature. 



Sparrow. — On a former, occasion, I recorded an instance 

 of a Sparrow, for some unknown purpose, carrying away 

 the green leaf of a cherry-tree to its young. On May 21st, 

 I took notice of one several times bearing in its bill the 

 petals of hawthorn blossom to its nest in the eaves. Some 

 of them having dropped, were found to be such without 

 doubt. 



Goldfinch. — A flock of this now rarely seen bird has 

 been notified to me as having visited the neighbourhood of 

 Cockburn Law, near the end of November. I saw, several 

 years since, a few Goldfinches on a road-side here, picking 

 thistle-seeds; and about 1835, I witnessed another family 

 party, during snowy weather, surrounding some scattered 

 thistles in a field at Penmanshiel. When my father was a 

 boy, about 1793-4, he says great numbers frequented the 

 top of the sea-banks at Oldcambus, where they fed on the 



