WHINCHAT. 535 
Pult. Cat. Dorset, p. 9. — Bewick's Br. Birds, 1. p. 231. male. — -Flem, Br. Anim. 
p. 67. — Sweet’s Br. Warbler, p. 1. — Selby, pi. 48. fig. 2. p.20l.* 
This species weig-hs about four drams and a half ; length full five 
inches. The bill is black, the base beset with bristles ; irides dark 
hazel ; crown of the head, cheeks, hind-neck, back, and upper tail co- 
verts, black, each feather margined with rufous-brown, which gives the 
bird a pretty spotted appearance ; from the upper mandible a broad 
white streak passes over the eye, on each side, to the back of the head, 
where it almost meets ; from the chin another white streak passes down 
each side of the neck ; throat and breast light ferruginous ; sides the 
same, but less bright ; belly and under tail coverts white, tinged with 
the same ; wing coverts and quills dusky black, partly edged with 
rufous-brown ; on the wing, near the shoulder, is a large patch of 
white, and a smaller one of the same colour on the greater coverts of 
the primores ; tail short, the feathers white more than half way from 
the base ; the rest dusky black, slightly tipped and margined with pale 
rufous-brown ; legs black. 
This is a migrative species, appearing with us about the middle of 
April, inhabiting the same places as the chick-stone, and corresponding 
with that bird in all its habits, except that this does not remain with us 
during the winter. It is most frequently found about furzy places, where 
it breeds. It places its nest on the ground, amongst the grass, at the 
bottom of a bush, very artfully concealed, generally forming a path 
through the grass to it. This nest is composed of dried grass and stalks, 
with very little moss externally, and lined with fine dried grass. The 
eggs are generally six in number, entirely blue, without a spot ; in 
which they differ from those of the chick-stone, which have a faint 
appearance of rufous, disposed in small close-set spots at the larger end. 
This elegant little bird sings very prettily, and that not unfrequently 
suspended on the wing over the furze. It always sits on the top branches 
of a bush, watching for flies, its principal food ; and, like the fly-catchers, 
will dart into the air, and return to the same spray repeatedly. It 
seems also a more local species than the chick-stone : is rarely found 
in the further part of Devonshire and in Cornwall, but is plentiful in 
Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire, and the more eastern 
parts. Selby traced it also a considerable way into Scotland. 
It is remarkable that many of the summer migrative species of 
warblers are not to be found in the west of England, and yet the whole 
of them are met with in Wiltshire, and from thence to the eastern 
coast, especially about London and the adjoining counties : from this it 
should appear that they come to that coast first from the continent 
