ground, and contains bluish-green eggs, faintly speckled with 
reddish-brown. The call-note of the whinchat, incessantly 
uttered when its young are approached, resembles the word 
“ u-tick,” and furnishes a name by which the species is known 
in some districts. 
Its food consists of worms, small slugs, beetles, and other 
insects, particularly wireworms, and it is said to take berries 
occasionally. 
Fiu. 8.— Wlieatear, !SarkoIa cenanthe. 
682 
Wild Birds Useful and Injurious. 
The Whinchat {Saxicola ruhetra) is a summer visitor, 
arriving towards the end of April. It is fond of open heaths, 
but also exhibits great partiality for meadow land, and, one is 
tempted to add, for telegraph wires. The male (fig. 9) is a pretty 
bird, having a fawn-coloured breast, pied tail, and a well-defined 
white streak above the eye. The female and young are much 
paler in colour. The nest, carefully concealed, is placed on the 
