October.

How strange is it 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 seventh of November. The martins and red-wing
fieldfares were flying in sight together; an uncommon assemblage
of summer and winter birds.

A little 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, that 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 black-cap (motacilla
atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not: I chink there is no doubt of
it: for, in April, in the very first fine weather, they come trooping,
all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They