[126]The 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.

[127]Coccothraustes vulgaris of modern systematists.

Transcriber’s Notes