When you say that in breeding-time the cock-snipes make a bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should rather have said a humming), I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are playing about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with their mouths: but whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say; but this I know, that when this noise happens the bird is always descending, and his wings are violently agitated.
Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, and, leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep-walks.
Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, where there is a great lake: it was kept awhile, but died.
I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild-ducks.
Speaking of the swift, that page says "its drink the dew;" whereas it should be "it drinks on the wing;" for all the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like Virgil's bees, they drink flying; "flumina summa libant." In this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar.
Of the sedge-bird be pleased to say it sings most part of the night; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing; or in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song.
NOTES TO LETTER XXXIX.
1. The red-backed butcher-bird, or shrike, is common enough in some districts. I found several nests one year in some thorn trees in a small field in Norfolk. The shrike has a habit of impaling the beetles or other small live creatures it feeds upon, on the thorns, to await its convenience for eating them, and some spots have quite the appearance of a well-stocked larder.
