The Natural History of Selborne Volume I Part 9

When you say that in breeding-time the c.o.c.k snipes make a bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should rather have said a humming), I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are playing about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with their mouths: but whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say; but this I know, that when this noise happens, the bird is always descending, and his wings are violently agitated.

Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, and, leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep-walks.

Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, where there is a great lake: it was kept awhile, but died.

I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild ducks.

Speaking of the swift, that page says "its drink the dew;" whereas it should be "it drinks on the wing;" for all the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like Virgil's bees, they drink flying; "_flumina summa libant_." In this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar.

Of the sedge-bird, be pleased to say it sings most part of the night; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing; or, in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it rea.s.sumes its song.

LETTER XL.

SELBORNE, _Sept. 2nd_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared; so that there was no danger of confounding the dams with their _pulli_: and besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the s.e.xes, nor the individuals of different chimneys the one for the other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each s.e.x has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked shape; with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of the male than in that of the female.

Nightingales, when their young first come abroad and are helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise, and also a snapping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they walk; these last sounds seem intended for menace and defiance.

The gra.s.shopper-lark chirps all night in the height of summer.

Swans turn white the second year, and breed the third.

Weasels prey on moles, as appears by their being sometimes caught in mole-traps.

Sparrow-hawks sometimes breed in old crows' nests, and the kestril in churches and ruins.

There are supposed to be two sorts of eels in the island of Ely. The threads sometimes discovered in eels are perhaps their young: the generation of eels is very dark and mysterious.

Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and seem never to settle on trees.

When redstarts shake their tails they move them horizontally, as dogs do when they fawn: the tail of a wagtail, when in motion, bobs up and down like that of a jaded horse.

Hedge-sparrows have a remarkable flirt with their wings in breeding-time; as soon as frosty mornings come they make a very piping, plaintive noise.

Many birds, which become silent about Midsummer, rea.s.sume their notes again in September, as the thrush, blackbird, woodlark, willow-wren, etc.; hence August is by much the most mute month, the spring, summer, and autumn through. Are birds induced to sing again because the temperament of autumn resembles that of spring?

Linnaeus ranges plants geographically; palms inhabit the tropics, gra.s.ses the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the polar circles; no doubt animals may be cla.s.sed in the same manner with propriety.

House-sparrows build under eaves in the spring; as the weather becomes hotter, they get out for coolness, and nest in plum-trees and apple-trees. These birds have been known sometimes to build in rooks'

nests, and sometimes in the forks of boughs under rooks' nests.

As my neighbour was housing a rick, he observed that his dogs devoured all the little red mice that they could catch, but rejected the common mice; and that his cats ate the common mice, refusing the red.

Redb.r.e.a.s.t.s sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn. The reason that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus; in the latter their song becomes distinguishable. Many songsters of the autumn seem to be the young c.o.c.k redb.r.e.a.s.t.s of that year: nothwithstanding the prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the summer fruits.

The t.i.tmouse, which early in February begins to make two quaint notes, like the whetting of a saw, is the marsh t.i.tmouse; the great t.i.tmouse sings with three cheerful, joyous notes, and begins about the same time.

Wrens sing all the winter through, frost excepted. House-martins came remarkably late this year both in Hampshire and Devonshire. Is this circ.u.mstance for or against either hiding or migration?

Most birds drink sipping at intervals; but pigeons take a long continued draught, like quadrupeds. Notwithstanding what I have said in a former letter, no grey crows were ever known to breed on Dartmoor; it was my mistake.

The appearance and flying of the _Scaraboeus solst.i.tialis_, or fern-chafer, commence with the month of July, and cease about the end of it. These scarabs are the constant food of _Caprimulgi_, or fern-owls, through that period. They abound on the chalky downs and in some sandy districts, but not in the clays.

In the garden of the Black Bear inn in the town of Reading, is a stream or ca.n.a.l running under the stables and out into the fields on the other side of the road. In this water are many carps, which lie rolling about in sight, being fed by travellers, who amuse themselves by tossing them bread; but as soon as the weather grows at all severe these fishes are no longer seen, because they retire under the stables, where they remain till the return of spring. Do they lie in a torpid state? If they do not, how are they supported?

The note of the whitethroat, which is continually repeated, and often attended with odd gesticulations on the wing, is harsh and displeasing.

These birds seem of a pugnacious disposition, for they sing with an erected crest and att.i.tudes of rivalry and defiance; are shy and wild in breeding-time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunting lonely lanes and commons; nay, even the very tops of the Suss.e.x Downs, where there are bushes and covert, but in July and August they bring their broods into gardens and orchards, and make great havoc among the summer fruits.

The blackcap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, and wild pipe; yet that strain is of short continuance, and his motions are desultory; but when that bird sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours forth very sweet but inward melody, and expresses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted.

Blackcaps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they warble their throats are wonderfully distended.

The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like that of the whitethroat; some birds have a few more notes than others. Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the c.o.c.k sings from morning to night. He affects neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, and loves to build in orchards and about houses; with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole.

The fly-catcher is, of all our summer birds, the most mute and the most familiar; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door where people are going in and out all day long. This bird does not make the least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it thinks its young in danger from cats or other annoyances; it breeds but once, and retires early.

Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden; the former has produced more than one hundred and twenty species, the latter only two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add, also, that it has shown near half the species that were ever known in Great Britain.

On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious; but when I recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the information it may happen to contain.

LETTER XLI.

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft-billed birds that continue with us the winter through subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wryneck (so much resembling the hardy race of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know.

I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams near their spring-heads, where they never freeze, and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus of _Phryganeae_, etc.

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings, and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a gra.s.s-plot on any mild winter's night. Redb.r.e.a.s.t.s and wrens in the winter haunt outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the _Lepidoptera ordo_, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks, to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings, and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself.

Every species of t.i.tmouse winters with us; they have what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the hard and the soft, between the Linnaean genera of _Fringilla_ and _Motacilla_. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for succour in the severest seasons to houses and neighbourhoods; and that is the delicate long-tailed t.i.tmouse, which is almost as minute as the golden-crowned wren; but the blue t.i.tmouse or nun (_Parus caeruleus_), the cole-mouse (_Parus ater_), the great black-headed t.i.tmouse (_Fringillago_), and the marsh t.i.tmouse (_Parus pal.u.s.tris_), all resort at times to buildings, and in hard weather particularly. The great t.i.tmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses; and, in deep snows, I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards (to my no small delight and admiration), draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance.

The blue t.i.tmouse, or nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a general devourer. Besides insects, it is very fond of flesh, for it frequently picks bones on dunghills: it is a vast admirer of suet, and haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I have known twenty in a morning caught with snap mouse-traps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick holes in apples left on the ground, and be well entertained with the seeds on the head of a sunflower. The blue, marsh, and great t.i.tmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley and oat-straws from the sides of ricks.

How the wheatear and whinchat support themselves in winter cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and warrens; the former especially, where there are stone quarries: most probably it is that their maintenance arises from the aureliae of the _Lepidoptera ordo_, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness.

I am, etc.

LETTER XLII.

SELBORNE, _March 9th_, 1775.