CHAPTER V. 
Rarer Birds visitors to the Isle of Wight—Spoon-bill—Red- 
necked Phalarope — Bittern — Gannet — White-fronted 
(Laughing) Goose— Black Redstart —Common Ditto— 
Hoopoe—Snow Bunting—Cirl Bunting— Brambling— 
Merlin — Hobby — Grossbeak — Wryneck — Grasshopper 
Warbler—Stone Curlew —Dotterel— Ring Dotterel and 
Ox-bird—Grey Plover—Golden Plover—Protest against 
killing rare Birds. 
MONG the rarer birds which have come 
within my own knowledge as visitors to the 
Isle of Wight are the following :— 
The Spoonbill. The Red-necked Phalarope 
(Phalaropus hyperboreus). The Bittern (at least 
two instances). The Gannet ;—one of these birds 
was in December, 1853, after a storm of unusual 
violence, found by some boys going to plough at 
a distance of several miles from the sea: it was 
unable to fly more than a short distance, and they 
soon ran it down, when they “disarmed the 
terrors of its beak” by running a knife into its 
throat. Another of these birds had been, singu- 
