PECULIARITIES OF BIRDS. 
113 
woodlarks hang poised in the air ; and titlarks rise and fall in 
large curves, singing in their descent. The white-throat uses 
odd jerks and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. 
All the duck kind waddle ; divers and auks walk as if fettered, 
and stand erect on their tails : these are the compedes of Linnaeus. 
Geese and cranes, and most wild fowls, move in figured flights, 
often changing their position. The secondary remiges of Tringse, 
wild ducks, and some others, are very long, and give their wings, 
when in motion, a hooked appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, 
and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly 
make any despatch ; the reason is plain, their wings are placed 
too forward out of the true centre of gravity ; as the legs of auks 
and divers are situated too backward. 
LETTER XLin. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
DEAR SIR, Selhorne, Sept. 9, 1778. 
From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to 
their notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not 
that I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier, 
who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between two 
owls, reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and 
devastation ; but I would be thought only to mean that many of 
the winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to 
express their various passions, wants, and feelings ; such as anger, 
fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the Hke. All species are not 
lark, as Mr. White terms it) and the other species of anthus^ all of which again strikingly differ 
from the larks, which advance by short quick steps, and with the tarsal joint much bent. The 
tree-pipit walks slowly, with somewhat of the gait of a gallinaceous bird ; the common and shore 
pipits running in the manner of a wagtail. Among walking, or rather running birds, must also 
be included the blue-throated fantail, or blue-throated redstart, as Mr. Selby and others erro- 
neously term it, a species which invariably advances with an alternate motion of the feet, and 
runs very rapidly, whereas all the redstarts hop. The fantail is a bird of beautiful plumage, 
which as yet has only been once met with in the British Isles, on a wild Northumbrian moor — a 
locality which no redstart would have frequented. It is intermediate in its general character 
between the redstarts and water-wagtails, which latter it more resembles in habit, much fre- 
quenting, according to Bechstein, the vicinity of water. A living specimen that 1 once had an 
opportunity of watching for a considerable time, in the aviary of Professor Rennie, was much in 
the habit of widely spreading the tail, at intervals, as it ran about. It was very tame, and would 
readily take insect food from the hand. This species has rather a pleasing song, some of its 
notes a little resembling those of the wagtail. It is, however, a single moulting bird, allied to 
the redstarts, to the chats, and to certain ousels {■petrocincla) ■ A congener to it has lately been 
detected in the Himmalaya mountains. — Ed. 
* See Spectator, Vol. VII., No. 512. 
