The eggs are short and round; of a dirty white, spotted with
dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I
pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost
any day; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for
they make a clamour which may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a
most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem
sworn like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them
before the pointers in turnip-fields.
I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens:
two I know perfectly; but have not been able yet to procure the
third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that
constancy, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one
has a joyous, easy, laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The
former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer,
and weighs two drams and a half; while the latter weighs but two:
so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper
(being the first summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck
sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March,
and continues them through the spring and summer till the end of
August, as appears by my journals.
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