that they show for men or guns, that they have been little accustomed to places of much resort. Navigators mention that in the Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds are so little acquainted with the human form that they settle on men's shoulders; and have no more dread of a sailor than they would have of a goat that was grazing. A young man at Lewes, in Sussex, assured me that about seven years ago ring-ousels abounded so about that town in the autumn that he killed sixteen himself in one afternoon: he added farther, that some had appeared since in every autumn; but he could not find that any had been observed before the season in which he shot so many. I myself have found these birds in little parties in the autumn cantoned all along the Sussex-downs, wherever there were shrubs and bushes, from Chichester to Lewes; particularly in the autumn of 1770. I am, etc. DEAR SIR, LETTER XXXIX TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE Selborne, Nov. 9, 1773. As you desire me to send you such observations as may occur, I take the liberty of making the following remarks, that you may, according as you think me right or wrong, admit or reject what I here advance, in your intended new edition of the British Zoology. The osprey1 was shot about a year ago at Frinshampond, a great lake, at about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a plough and devouring a fish it used to precipitate itself into the water, and so take its prey by surprise. A great ash-coloured butcher-bird 2 was shot last winter in Tisted-park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne they are rare aves in this country. 1 British Zoology, vol. i., p. 128. 2 p. 161. Crows 1 go in pairs the whole year round. Cornish choughs 2 abound, and breed on Beachy-head and on all the cliffs of the Sussex coast. The common wild-pigeon,3 or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the south of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November; is usually the latest winter bird of passage. Before our beechen woods were so much destroyed we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile together as they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us early in spring; where do they breed? The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the misselbird the storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring in blowing showery weather; its song often commences with the year with us it builds much in orchards. 4 A gentleman assures me that he has taken the nests of ring-ousels on Dartmoor: they build in banks on the sides of streams. Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they play and toy about on the wing; and particularly while they are descending, and sometimes as they stand on the ground. Adamson's testimony seems to me to be a very poor evidence that European swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal: he does not talk at all like an ornithologist; and probably saw only the swallows of that country, which I know build within Governor O'Hara's hall against the roof. Had he known European swallows, would he not have mentioned the species? The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it flies this species appears commonly about a week before the house-martin, and about ten or twelve days before the swift. In 1772 there were young house-martins 8 in their nest till October the twenty-third. The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the house-swallow: viz., about the twenty-fourth or twentysixth of April. Whin-chats and stone-chatters1 stay with us the whole year. Some wheat-ears 2 continue with us the winter through. Wagtails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter. 3 Bullfinches, when fed on hempseed, often become wholly black. We have vast flocks of female chaffinches all the winter, with hardly any males among them. 5 When you say that in breeding-time the cocksnipes make a bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should have rather said an 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 7 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 a while, but died. I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmerforest 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 10 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, 1 British Zoology, vol. ii., pp. 270, 271. 4 p. 306. 6 2 5 p. 358. p. 360. p. 269. 3 7 p. 409. 8 9 p. 300. P. 475. 10 p. 15. p. 16. 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 reassumes its song. DEAR SIR, LETTER XL TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774. 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 sexes, nor the individuals of different chimnies the one for the other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each sex 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 grasshopper-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 red-starts 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 reassume 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? Linnæus ranges plants geographically; palms inhabit the tropics, grasses the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the polar circles; no doubt animals may be classed 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. Red-breasts 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 cock red-breasts of that year: notwithstanding the prejudices |