By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



63 



a good ornithologist, believes it to have been a young bird and a 

 hen. The Greenshank, though a scarce bird in England, does 

 make its appearance almost every year as a straggler, and is 

 generally observed during the spring or autumn migrations, either 

 on its way to or its return from its breeding places in the far north. 

 Hence our Wiltshire specimen was undoubtedly on its journey 

 southwards, when it halted to rest in the parish of Heytesbury. 

 It is almost always found in England as a single bird, and very 

 rarely in company with others. 



" Ruff." (Machetes pugnax). This is truly a fen bird, and 

 belongs of right to the eastern counties, from which however the 

 draining of the fens, and the rage for reclaiming waste land, have 

 nearly succeeded in banishing it. But I am glad to hail it as a 

 straggler to our county, for it is extremely handsome, and withal 

 a very interesting species. Two instances have come to my know- 

 ledge of its occurrence in Wiltshire ; one killed by a farmer in 

 the neighbourhood of Wootton Bassett, about 1850 ; the other 

 taken in the immediate neighbourhood of Salisbury in 1828. The 

 striking feature of the bird is the strange frill or ruff of feathers 

 which together with conspicuous auricular plumes, surrounds the 

 neck of the male bird in his breeding plumage, and which when 

 raised form a shield round the head, reminding one of the costume 

 of the worthies, with whose portraits we are familiar, of the time 

 of Elizabeth. These birds are polygamous, unlike all the rest of 

 the Snipe family : they are exceedingly pugnacious, hence both 

 their generic and specific names : and so much do they vary in 

 colour of plumage, that it is scarcely possible to find two alike ; 

 the ruffs which these birds assume being of all shades ; from white, 

 yellow, chesnut, brown, or a mixture of any or all of these colours 

 to pure black. At all other seasons of the year, they are of 

 comparatively sober hue, and more nearly resemble the females, 

 which are called Reeves. 



" Woodcock. " ( Scolopax rusticola) . I need scarcel} 7 assert that 

 this is a winter migrant to our county, though I fear it is becoming 

 less abundant every year. A few pairs undoubtedly remain in 

 England to breed in summer, and a nest was found at Winterslow, in 



