STONE CURLEW. 
45 
continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, bnt it 
was so desultory that I missed my aim.* 
I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius (Bdicnemus,\ should 
be mentioned by the writers as a rare 
bird : it abounds in all the champaign 
parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and 
breeds I think all the summer, having 
young ones, I know, very late in the 
autumn. Already they begin clamour- 
ing in the evening. They cannot, I 
think, with any propriety, be called, 
as they are by Mr. Ray, circa aquas 
versantes/' for with us, by day at least, European Thicknee. 
they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep-walks, 
far removed from water : what they may do in the night I can- 
not say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads 
and frogs. t 
I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Lin- 
naeus perhaps would call the species mus minimus. 
LETTER XVL To T. PENNANT, Esa. 
DEAR SIR, Selborne, April 18, 1768. 
The history of the stone curlew, charadrius cedicnemus, is as 
follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on 
the bare ground, without any nest, in the field; so that the 
countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The 
young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c., and 
are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they 
* I knotjv of no kind that will correspond altogether with this description. It certainly was not 
that lovely -plumaged species, the bearded pinnock (calamophilus biarmicus), as captain Brown 
strangely imagines, in his edition of this work, for that bird has no " yellow-green colour" about 
it : nor would it appear to be either of the summer warblers, the time of the year precluding this 
supposition ; besides which, none of them ever hang with the back downwards. By the term 
salicaria, Mr. White evidently intends the pettychaps, or " willow-wren" genus (sylvia, as now 
limited;, and not the reedlings, or "aquatic warblers," which in modern nomenclature are 
designated by that name. — Ed. 
t European thicknee, cediaiemvs Europaus- — Ed. 
t Likewise small mammifers, which the bustards, also, and the different poultry tribes, are 
not very scrupulous about swallowing, the common fowl being quite an adept at catching mice. 
Sir W. Jardine has even taken a field-mouse from the stomach of a meadow-crake, or " land- 
rail" {crex prateiisis)' In the stomachs of the cedicnemi I have chiefly found the remains of 
various beetles — Ed. 
