38 
NATURAL EISTOBT 
in my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle 
boys, who would never let them be at rest/ 
Three gros-beaks {Loxia coccothraustesY 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. 
^ 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 (c/. 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 pollard 
willows 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 grounds of a lady in Sussex, near 
Chichester. — Ed. 
2 Coccothraustes vulgaris of modern systematists. 
