86 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
The osprey was shot about a year ago at Frinsham Pond, a 
great lake at about six miles from hence, while it was sitting 
on the handle of a plough and devouring a fish: it used to 
precipitate itself into the water, and so take its prey by 
surprise. 
A great ash-colored butcher-bird was shot’ last winter in 
Tisted Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne: they 
are rare aves in this county. 
Crows go in pairs all the year round. 
Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beechy Head, and 
on all the cliffs of the Sussex coast. 
The common wild pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of passage 
in the south of England, seldom appearing till towards the 
end of November ; is usually the latest winter bird of passage. 
Before our beechen woods were so much destroyed we had 
myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile together as 
they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us early in 
spring : where do they breed ? 
The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird 
the storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring, in blowing, 
showery weather ; its song often commences with the year: 
with us it builds much in orchards. 
A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring-ousels 
on Dartmoor : they build in banks on the sides of streams. 
Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also 
as they play and toy about on the wing; and particularly 
while they are descending, and sometimes they stand on the 
ground, 
Adanson’s testimony seems to me to be very poor evidence 
that European swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal : 
he does not talk at all like an ornithologist ; and probably saw 
only the swallows of that country, which I know build within 
Governor O’Hara’s hall against the roof. Had he known Euro- 
pean swallows, would he not have mentioned the species ? 
