216 
BIRDS ABOUT ELLESMERE AND LLANSILIN. Nov., 1892. 
spring and summer. Curlews, lapwings, and snipe all make 
tlieir nests on the Llansilin hills ; all lay four eggs, and these 
eggs always have their pointed ends turned inwards, in order, 
I suppose, to economise space. 
To turn to names, curlew is imitative of the cry of 
the bird like pee-wit. Once, no doubt, it was ke-or-lu, 
or something of the sort, and when the word was shortened 
it became less expressive of the whistle. The derivation 
of lapwing is not so obvious as might be supposed. It 
has nothing to do with flapwing. In Wycliffe’s Bible (Lev. 
xi. 19) it is spelt leepwynke. In Anglo-Saxon lileapan is to 
run nimbly rather than to leap or jump ; hence hleapere is 
a messenger. Our verb to “ wink ” is to move the eye 
obliquely. So lapwing means the bird which runs sideways. 
Shakespeare, whose observation nothing escapes, says, “See 
where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs.” The sidling run of a 
woman is well known. The derivations of birds’ names 
are often deceptive. Take redstart, for example. A good 
ornithologist once told me that the name was most 
expressive, the bird being apt to start aside and show the red 
of its tail. Start, however, in redstart means tail, Anglo- 
Saxon steort, sometimes a tail of land or promontory, as in 
Start Point in Devonshire. Redstart, i.e., red-tail, may be 
compared with red-pole, i.e., red-head. Take coletit for 
another example. This is not the tit as black as a coal, 
but the tit with the helmet, col in Anglo-Saxon, referring to 
the black head, divided on the hind part with a white spot. 
Tit itself may need explanation. In old English “ to 
titter ” did not mean to giggle, but to prattle or chatter. We 
still speak of tittle-tattle. If a human being, a tit is a 
chatterer or tale-bearer; 
“ Tell-tale tit, 
Thy tongue shall be slit, 
And every little dog shall have a little bit;” 
if a bird it is a twitterer. The snipe is the bird with the 
beak or neb, anciently sneb, whence snap and snip, to catch 
hold of anything with the beak. In old English, neb some¬ 
times stood for the human nose. Speaking of a proud woman, 
an old writer observed, “How high she holds her neb in air.” 
A snipe was also called a snite in some places ; in other words, 
the bird with the snout. 
Just a few words more. Some correspondents of the 
Oswestry Advertiser regard the nut-liatch as rare. This is not 
my view. While feeding birds with bread in my verandah 
during the snow last winter, nuthatches kept coming and 
going so frequently as to convince me that there were many 
of them. The nuthatch is the only climbing bird that climbs 
