and formed a part of every south county
banquet in their season. People visited Brighton solely to eat them, as
they now go to Greenwich for whitebait and to Colchester for oysters.

This is how Fuller describes the little creature in the
_Worthies_--"_Wheatears_ is a bird peculiar to this County, hardly found
out of it. It is so called, because fattest when Wheat is ripe, whereon
it feeds; being no bigger than a Lark, which it equalleth in _fineness_
of the flesh, far exceedeth in the _fatness_ thereof. The worst is, that
being onely seasonable in the heat of summer, and naturally larded with
lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding
within _fourty_ miles) _London Poulterers_ have no mind to meddle with
them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That
_Palate-man_ shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his
judgment concerning the abilities of a great _Lord_, concluded him a man
of very weak parts, '_because once he saw him, at a_ great Feast, _feed
on_ CHICKENS _when there were_ WHEATEARS _on the Table_.' I will adde no
more in praise of this _Bird_, for fear some _female Reader_ may fall in
_longing_ for it, and unhappily be disappointed of her desire." A
contemporary of Fuller, John Taylor, from whom I have already quoted,
and shall quote again, thus unscientifically dismisses the wheatear in
one of his doggerel narratives:--

Six weeks or thereabouts they are catch'd there,
And are well-nigh 11 months God knows where.

As a matter of fact, the winter home of the wheatear is Africa.

[Sidenote: THE SHEPHERDS' TRAPS]

The capture of wheatears--mostly illegally by nets--still continues in a
very small way to meet a languid demand, but the Sussex ortolan, as the
little bird was sometimes called, has passed from the bill of fare.
Wheatears (which, despite Fuller, have no connection with ears of wheat,
the word signifying white tail) still abound, skimming over the turf in
little groups; but they no longer fly towards the dinner table. The best
and most interesting description that I know of the old manner of taking
them, is to be found in Mr. W. H. Hudson's _Nature in Downland_. The
season began in July, when the little fat birds rest on the Downs on
their way from Scotland and northern England to their winter home, and
lasted through September. In July, says Mr. Hudson, the "Shepherds made
their 'coops,' as their traps were called--a T-shaped t