- A2 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thickest 
part of a bush; and will sing at a yard distance, provided it 
be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the 
other side of the hedge where it haunted, and then it would 
run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a hundred yards 
together, through the bottom of the thorns; yet it would not 
come into fair sight ; but in a morning early, and when undis- 
turbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with 
its wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, 
but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently 
confounds it with the Aeguli non cristatt, from which it is very 
distinct. | 
The fly-catcher has not yet appeared ; it usually breeds in 
my vine. The redstart begins to sing: its note is short and 
imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. ‘The 
willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, 
destroying the peas, cherries, currants, etc.; and are so tame 
that a gun will not ‘scare them. 
My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter 
with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it 
a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact ; it 
proved to be the nuthatch. Mr. Ray says that the less spotted 
woodpecker does the same. This noise may be heard a 
furlong or more off. 
Now is the-only time to ascertain the short-winged summer 
birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any 
remarks on such a restless tribe; and when once the young 
begin to appear it is all confusion: there is no distinction of 
genus, species, or sex.} 
1 A list of the summer birds of passage discovered in this neighborhood, 
ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear: smallest willow-wren, 
wryneck, house-swallow, martin, sand-martin, cuckoo, nightingale, black- 
cap, white-throat, middle willow-wren, swift, stone-curlew (?), turtle-dove (?), 
grasshopper-lark, landrail, largest willow-wren, redstart, goat-sucker, or 
fern-owl, fly-catcher. 
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