The legs of the larger of these
two are flesh-coloured; of the less, black.
The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last
Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this
little bird, which seems to be close by though at an hundred yards
distance; and, when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than
when a great way oil.. Had I not been a little acquainted with
insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I
should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta
whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell
them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature,
skulking in the thickest part of a bush; and will sing at a yard
distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to
go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted; and then it
would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a hundred yards
together, through the bottom of the thorns; yet it would not come
into fair sight: but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it
sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with its wings.
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