INTRODUCTION. XVII 



this country, such as Willow Wrens,, Whitethroats, and 

 Pipits, perform their long journeys by night, as evidenced by 

 the numbers which strike against the lighthouses and are 

 kiUed; others, like the SwaiUows, migrate by day; and 

 many instances are on record of their having been ob- 

 served en route. Such opportunities in the case of the 

 rarer visitants are not so frequently enjoyed. The Hoopoe, 

 for example, an irregular spring and autumn migrant, 

 rarely occurring in winter, though met with annually in- 

 land, has seldom been observed on passage. In the 

 English Channel on the 15th April, 1854, a Hoopoe, 

 after flying two or three times round the steamer, entered 

 one of the windows of the saloon and was taken, apparently 

 exhausted with fatigue. Another, on the 21st April, 1853, 

 alighted on a mackerel-boat between the Eddy stone Lighthouse 

 and Plymouth Breakwater, in an exhausted state, and allowed 

 itself to be taken. There can be little doubt that this bird 

 occasionally nests in England, and would do so more fre- 

 quently if unmolested. A pair frequented Gilbert White's 

 Garden at Selborne; and another pair nested for several 

 years in the grounds of Pennsylvania Castle, Portland (c/. 

 Garland, 'Naturalist,' 1852, p. 82). According to Mr. 

 Turner of Sherborne, Dorsetshire, the nest has been taken 

 on three or four occasions by the school-boys from poUard 

 willows on the banks of the river at Lent hay. The birds 

 were known to the boys as " hoops." 



The Roller (p. 34), which is so rare a bird in Scotland, has 

 once been procured in Orkney (c/. Saxby, ' Zoologist,' 1871, 

 p. 2561). The Red Grouse (p. 39) may be said to be the 

 only bird in the British Islands which is peculiar to our 

 fauna, unless, indeed, the Scotch Ptarmigan be considered 

 specifically distinct from the so-called Willow Grouse. 



Our knowledge of the supposed gular pouch in the male 



