The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton
By the Rev. Gilbert White, M.A.
THE STANDARD EDITION BY E. T. BENNETT.
Thoroughly revised, with additional Notes,
BY JAMES EDMUND HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S.
AUTHOR OF “A HANDBOOK OF BRITISH BIRDS,” “THE ORNITHOLOGY OF SHAKESPEARE,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS BY THOMAS BEWICK, HARVEY, AND OTHERS.
[Specimen Page.]
38 NATURAL HISTORY
in my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who would never let them be at rest.126
Three gros-beaks (Loxia coccothraustes)127 appeared some years ago in my fields, in the winter; one of which I shot: since that, now and then, one is occasionally seen in the same dead season.
Notes
126The hoopoe is an irregular spring and autumn visitant to this country. It has occasionally nested here, and would do so, no doubt, more frequently if unmolested. Colonel Montagu states, in his “Ornithological Dictionary,” that a pair of hoopoes began a nest in Hampshire, but being disturbed forsook it, and went elsewhere; and Dr. Latham, in the Supplement to his “General Synopsis,” has referred to a young Hoopoe in nestling plumage, which was shot in this country in May. A pair nested for several years in the grounds of Pennsylvania Castle, Portland (cf. Garland, “Naturalist,” 1852, p. 82), and according to Mr. Turner, of Sherborne, Dorsetshire, the nest has been taken on three or four occasions by the school-boys from pollard willows on the banks of the river at Lenthay. The birds were known to the boys as “hoops.” Mr. Jesse, in a note to this passage in his edition of the present work, states that a pair of hoopoes bred for many years in an old ash tree in the grounds of a lady in Sussex, near Chichester.—Ed.
127Coccothraustes vulgaris of modern systematists.