ates aah Ps ee 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ° 51 
it might easily have escaped his notice, had not the outcries 
and chattering of the whitethroats and other small birds drawn 
his attention to the bush where it was; its craw was filled with 
the legs and wings of beetles. 
The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) 
were some ring-ousels. 
This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being 
with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told 
us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries, some birds 
like blackbirds, with rings of white round their necks ; a neigh- 
boring farmer also at the same time observed the same ; but 
as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I 
mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November 
4th, 1767 (you, however, paid but small regard to what [ said, 
_ as I had not seen these birds myself); but last week the afore- 
said farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty, of these 
birds, shot two cocks and two hens ; and says, on recollection, 
that he remembers to have observed these birds again last 
spring, about Lady-day, as it were on their return to the north. 
Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of 
England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe ; and 
may retire before the excessive rigor of the frosts in those 
parts, and return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates. 
If this be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter 
passage, concerning whose migrations the writers are silent; 
but if these birds should prove the ousels of the north of 
England, then here is a migration disclosed within our own 
kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear 
whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the 
_ south : but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one 
cannot suppose that they would have continued so long 
unnoticed in the southern countries. The ousel is larger than 
a blackbird, and feeds on haws ; but last autumn (when there 
were no haws) it fed on yew-berries: in the spring it feeds on 
