Nov., 1892. BIRDS ABOUT ELLESMERE AND LLANSILIN. 
243 
hawk is a tautological expression, signifying the grasping 
bird that seizes on its prey. Locally, both the kite and the 
buzzard have the name of the puttock. Shakespeare uses 
the word. It is a corruption of poot-hawk. A pout or 
poot stands for a pullet, which is the young of any bird, 
not merely of a hen. Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, 
gives a quotation which attributes the “ scarstie ” of part¬ 
ridges and moor-fowls to the slaughter of their pouts and 
young ones. What hens are to harriers, what sparrows are 
to sparrow-hawks, pouts or poots are to puttocks. Merlin 
comes to us through Norman-French from the Latin merula, 
the name of a bird. Kestrel similarly comes to us from the 
Latin through Norman-French, but the Latin word is a 
Latinisation of a Greek word with a diminutive termination. 
The Greek word, at the bottom of the matter, means a rod or 
spindle. And the notion, at the bottom of the matter, is 
vibration. 
Leaving the hawk tribe, I will go on to the tribe of 
ducks. A great northern diver has been obtained at 
Ellesmere mere, and is now in Lord Hill’s collection. 
There is also a shag there which was got at the same mere. 
I have a scoter in my collection which was killed at Cole- 
mere. For weeks together I have seen a cormorant on Elles¬ 
mere mere. I have also seen terns or sea swallows there in 
the spring. In the winter the commonest ducks about the 
meres are widgeon, teal, tufted ducks, and pochards. Every 
now and then a scaup duck appears on the scene. I do 
not consider this duck to be “ very rare,” as Mr. Beckwith 
states. 
To turn for a moment to names. The scoter, of course, 
is the shooter or darter, from the Anglo-Saxon sceotan, 
the “ c ” having been softened into “ h.” From the same root 
is derived kite, once skite, the initial “ s” having been lost. 
The scyta is the bird that shoots through the air ; the scoter 
is the bird that darts along the water. We speak every 
day of a skittish horse, and the adjective implies darting 
about. The older form of widgeon is presumably wingeon, 
from Danish and Swedish winge, a wing. The original notion 
is the bird that flutters its wings and flaps about. 
The man who has seen a bittern is a lucky man. When I 
was quite a boy I saw one myself. Going off very early one 
morning to fish in Whitemere, I heard a great booming noise 
in the direction of the water. As I drew near, a brown bird, 
as big as a heron, got up out of the weeds and flew away. 
I knew it was a bittern at once, because there was a stuffed 
bittern in a case at home. The little bittern is not quite so 
rare as the big bittern ; one has been killed at Petton ; 
