3-4 
NATURAL HISTORY 
were then fledged in tlieir nests. Botli species will breed 
again once ; for I see by my Fauna of last year, that broods 
came forth so late as September the eighteenth. Are not 
these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migra- 
tion ? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests 
last year so late as September the twenty-ninth ; and yet 
they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October. 
How strange is it that the swift, which seems to live 
exactly the same life as the swallow and house-martin, should 
leave us before the middle of August invariably ! ^ while the 
latter stay often to the middle of October ; and once I saw 
numbers of house-martins on the seventh of November. 
The martins and redwing fieldfares were flying in sight 
together — an uncommon assemblage of winter birds ! ^ 
A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the Alauda 
trivialiSf or rather perhaps of the Motacilla trochilus) still 
continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the top of 
tall woods. ^ 
The Stoparola of Ray (for which we have as yet no name 
in these parts) is called, in your Zoology, the flycatcher.* 
There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird, which 
seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its 
stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it 
springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly 
ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same 
stand for many times together. 
* In quoting the above remark, under tlie head of Swift, in the second 
volumeof his "British Zoology," 1768, p. 246, Pennant adds : " For these, 
and several other observations, we owe our acknowledgments to the 
Reverend Mr. White, of Selborne, Hampshire." — Ed. 
2 An uncommon assemblage for the time of year, no doubt, though it 
would not have been so in the Spring ; for at that season redmngs and 
fieldfares frequently stay with us for a month after the swallows and 
martins have arrived. — Ed. 
^ By Alauda trivialis White intended the grasshopper warbler, as 
will be seen by referring to his list of summer birds, in the 16th Letter 
to Mr. Pennant. His Motacilla trochilus was the willow wren ; but the 
" little yellow bird," which he compared with these, was no doubt the 
wood wren, Ph. sihiJafrix, of modern naturalists. — Ed. 
* The spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa grisolay of modern naturalists. 
—Ed. 
