CHAPTER XL 



THE SPECIES. 



TN this Chapter only such particulars are given as are needful to 

 -*- separate between the species. For the distinctions between the 

 Genera, &c., reference must be made to the preceding chapters. As 

 an aid in identification the species are arranged in order of their 

 average size ; their accepted ornithological order will be found in the 

 coloured plates. In the notes a few particulars are given as to 

 flight, song, and nest. Where not otherwise stated, the plumage 

 of the sexes is alike. The dimensions are fully given in the chapter 

 devoted to them, and the eggs have also been dealt specially with in 

 a similar way. 



AcanthyUis. Plate x. CYPSELID^. 



140. caudacuta, SJ in. Needle-tailed Swift. Head greenisli black ; 



forehead white ; back brown ; wings dark green witli 



a little white on secondaries ; throat, breast, and 



under tail coverts white ; tail shafts ending in spines. 



The Needle-tailed Swift — Dimensions, Ho — is an Asiatic, which has been added to the 



British List on the strength of two specimens only, one shot in 1846 and the other in 1879. 



Nothing is known of its eggs, but it is said to breed in Tibet and thereabouts. As the two 



British victims are the only two ever heard of in Kui'ope, and as the bird is a regular visitor to 



Australia, it is not unlikely that our specimens were brought home as examples of the 



Colonial avifauna to be promptly shot on escape, and so made into British Birds. 



Accentor. Plate iv. ACCENTORINM {?3s.%a\i'^). 



45. modtilaris, si in- Hedge-Sparrow. Throat bluish-grey, shading into 



buff. 



46. collaris, 6J in. Alpine Accentor. Throat white, spotted with 



black. 



The Hedge Sparrow — Dimensions, Br ; Eggs, Da — is with us always, and is distinguishable 

 from the House Sparrow by its bluish breast and its slenderer beak, as well as by its generaj 

 bearing and behaviour. Its gait is a shufiling hop, which has given it one of its local names — 

 the Shufflewing — and its flight is short and direct from point to point without undulation, but 

 it rarely crosses a fleld if it can work round it among the hedges. Its note is a cheery sort of 

 " cheep," varied by an occasional " treep." The female is rather smaller than the male, and 

 more thickly striped about the head and neck. The nest is a fairly neat one, built low down 

 in a hedge, or among evergreens, and its materials are rootlets, twigs, green moss, dry grass, 

 and wool, lined generally^ with hair, feathers being present occasionally. The pretty blue 

 eggs are from four to six in number. 



The Alpine Accentor — Dimensions, El ; Eggs, Fe — is an occasional straggler from Southero 

 Europe. ^ Its flight is hasty and undulating, and occasionally soaring, somewhat like a lark's. 

 Its note is ** chich-ich-ich," with a call of '* tri-tri-tri." There are from five to six eggs ^n a 

 clutch, but the nest has not yet been found in Britain. 



F 2 



