40 
NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBOENE. 
The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a 
hird. It is a most artful creature, sculking in the thickest part of a 
bush ; and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was 
obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where it 
haunted, and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for an 
hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns ; yet it 
would not come into fair sight; but in a morning early, and when 
undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with 
its wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, but 
received his account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently confounds it 
with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct. See Ray's 
^^Philos. Letters," p. 108.* 
The fly-catcher {stojmrola) has not yet appeared ; it usually breeds 
in my vine. The redstart begins to sing, its note is short and imperfect, 
but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-wrens 
(the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas, 
cherries, currants, &c. ; and are so tame that a gun will not scare 
them. 
A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this 
Neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the Order in which 
they appear. 
My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with 
its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it ajar- 
bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact ; it proved to be 
the Sitta €Mroj)cea (the nuthatch.) Mr. Ray says that the less spotted 
* This passage in Ray's correspondence (Ray Society, p. 96), to which the 
above alludes, appears to occur in one of Mr. Johnson's letters to Ray, March. 
1672, and refers to the grasshopper-warbler, Salicaria locustella, and which is 
White's ' ' grasshopper-lark, " it is as follows : " I have sent you the little yellow-bird 
you called regulns non cristaius, what bird it is I know not ; but we have great 
store of them (Brignall, Greta Bridge), each morning about sunrise, and many 
times a-day ; besides she mounts to the highest branch in the bush, and there 
with bill erect, and wing hovering, she sends forth a sibilous noise like that of the 
g-rasshopper, but much shriller."— (See also Letter XXIV.) 
LINNiEI NOMINA. 
Smallest willow-wren, 
"Wryneck, 
House-swallow, 
Martin, 
Sand-martin, 
Cuckoo, 
Nightingale, 
Blackcap, 
Whitethroat, 
Middle willow-wren. 
Swift, 
Stone-curlew? 
Turtle-dove? 
Grasshopper-lark, 
Landrail, 
Largest willow-wrenj, 
Redstart, 
Goat-sucker, or fern-owl. 
Fly-catcher, 
Motacilla trochilus. 
Jynx torquilla. 
Hirundo rustica. 
Hii^ndo urbica. 
Hirundo riparia. 
Cucuhis canorus. 
Motckilla luscinia. 
Motacilla atricapilla. 
Motacilla sylvia. 
Motoxilla trochilus. 
Hirundo apus. 
Charadrius cedicnemus f 
Turtur aldrovandi? 
Alauda trivialis. 
Rallus crex. 
Motacilla trochilus. 
Motacilla phcenicurus. 
Caprimulgus europoius, 
Muscicapa grisola. 
