LIV.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
Bullfinches when fed on hempseed often become wholly 
black. 
We have vast flocks of female chaffinches all the winter, with 
hardly any males among them. 
When you say that in breeding time the cock-snipes make a 
bleating noise, and I a drumming sound (perhaps I should have 
rather said a humming), I suspect we mean the same thing. 
However, while they are playing about on the wing they cer- 
tainly make a loud piping with their mouths : but whether that 
bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the 
motion of their wings, I cannot say ; but this I know, that when 
this noise happens, the bird is always descending, and his wings 
are violently agitated. 
Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, 
and leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs 
and sheep-Avalks. 
Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and 
unhurt, but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles 
from Alresford, where there is a great lake : it was kept a while, 
but died. 
I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer "Forest 
in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young 
wild ducks. 
All the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the 
face of pools or rivers : like Virgil's bees, they drink flying — 
" flumina summa libaut." In this method of drinking perhaps 
this genus may be peculiar. 
The sedge-bird sings most part of the night ; its notes are 
hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds ; as 
the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent 
in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where 
it sits you immediately set it a singing ; or in other words, 
though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it 
reassumes its song. 
Selbornp:, Nov. 9, 1773. 
L 
