38 



NATURAL HISTORY 



in my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle 

 boys, who would never let them be at rest/ 



Three gros-beaks [Loxia coccothraustes}"^ appeared some 

 years ago in my fields, in the winter ; one of which I shot : 





THE HOOPOE. 



since that, now and then, one is occasionally seen in the 

 same dead season. 



1 The hoopoe is an irregular spring and autumn visitant to this 

 country. It has occasionally nested here, and would do so, no doubt, 

 more frequently if unmolested. Colonel Montagu states, in his 

 " Ornithological Dictionary," that a pair of hoopoes began a nest in 

 Hampshire, but being disturbed forsook it, and went elsewhere ; and Dr. 

 Latham, in the Supplement to his " General Synopsis," has referred to 

 a young Hoopoe in nestling plumage, which was shot in this country in 

 May. A pair nested for several years in the grounds of Pennsylvania 

 Castle, Portland (cf. Garland, "Naturalist," 1852, p. 82), and 

 according to Mr. Turner, of Sherborne, Dorsetshire, the nest has been 

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

 wiUows on the banks of the river at Lenthay. The birds were known 

 to the boys as " hoops." Mr. Jesse, in a note to this passage in his 

 edition of the present work, states that a pair of hoopoes bred for many 

 years in an old ash tree in the gi'ounds of a lady in Sussex, near 

 Chichester. — ^Ed. 



^ Coccothraustes vulgaris of modern systematists. 



