Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/90

Rh  ones. The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, and has its quill-feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white, which the others have not. This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings; and is, I make no doubt now, the regulus non cristatus of Ray, which he says "cantat voce stridulâ locustæ." Yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were three species.

  LETTER XX.

, October 6th, 1768

is I find in zoology as it is in botany; all nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. Several birds, which are said to belong to the north only, are it seems often in the south. I have discovered this summer three species of birds with us, which writers mention as only to be seen in the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the 14th May), was the sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus: it was a cockbird, and haunted the banks of some ponds near the village; and, as it had a companion, doubtless intended to have bred near that water. Besides, the owner has told me since, that on recollection, he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former summers.

The next bird that I procured (on the 21st May) was a male red-backed butcher bird, lanius collurio. My neighbour, who shot it, says that 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, turdi torquati.

This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an