f fell
down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows
among the rubbish; but on my questioning him whether he saw any of those
birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered me in the
negative; but that others assured him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July 11th, and
young martins (_hirundines urbicae_) were then fledged in their nests.
Both species will breed again once. For I see by my fauna of last year,
that young broods came forth so late as September 18th. Are not these
late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young
martins remained in their nests last year so late as September 29th; and
yet they totally disappeared with us by the 5th October.

How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same
life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before the middle
of August invariably! while the latter stay often till the middle of
October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th November.
The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight together, an
uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds!

A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the _alauda trivialis_,
or rather perhaps of the _motacilla trochilus_) still continues to make a
sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola of Ray
(for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called in your
zoology the fly-catcher. There is one circumstance characteristic of
this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes
its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth
on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the
ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together.

I perceive there are more than one species of the _motacilla trochilus_.
Mr. Derham supposes, in "Ray's Philos. Letters," that he has discovered
three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds
that have as yet no English name.

Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the blackcap (_motacilla
atricapilla_) be a bird of passage or not: I think there is no doubt of
it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at
once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are
delicate songsters.

Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of
this parish. It is very