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Letter VIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Dec. 20, 1770.
Dear Sir,
The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows (passeres
torquati).
There are doubtless many home internal migrations within this
kingdom that want to be better understood: witness those vast
flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without
hardly any cocks among them. Now was there a due proportion of
each sex, it should seem very improbable that any one district
should produce such numbers of these little birds; and much more
when only half of the species appears: therefore we may conclude
that the fringillae caelebes, for some good purposes, have a
peculiar migration of their own in which the sexes part. Nor should
it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of sexes in this species of
birds should be interrupted in winter; since in many animals, and
particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, except at
the season when commerce is necessary for the continuance of the
breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see Fauna Suecica, p. 85,
and Systema Naturae, p. 318. I see every winter vast flights of hen
chaffinches, but none of cocks.
Your method of accounting for the periodical motions of the
British singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very probable one;
since the matter of food is a great regulator of the actions and
proceedings of the brute creation: there is but one that can be set in
competition with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce
with you in one circumstance when you advance that, 'when they
have thus feasted, they again separate into small parties of five or
six, and get the best fare they can within a certain district, having
no inducement to go in quest of fresh-turned earth.' Now if you
mean that the business of congregating is quite at an end from the
conclusion of wheat-sowing to the season of barley and oats, it is
not the case with us; for larks and chaffinches, and particularly
linnets, flock and congregate as much in the very dead of winter as
when the husbandman is busy with his ploughs and harrows.
Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares leave
us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and to retire to some
districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That the former
pair before they retire, and that the hens are forward with egg, I
myself, when I was a sportsman, have often experienced. It cannot
indeed be denied but that now and then we hear of a woodcock's
nest, or young birds, discovered in some part or other of this island:
but then they are always mentioned as rarities, and somewhat out
of the common course of things: but as to redwings and fieldfares,
no sportsman or naturalist has ever yet, that I could hear, pretended
to have found the nest or young of those species in any part of
these kingdoms. And I the more admire at this instance as
extraordinary, since, to all appearance, the same food in summer as
well as in winter might support them here which maintains their
congeners, the blackbirds and thrushes, did they choose to stay the
summer through. From hence it appears that it is not food alone
which determines some species of birds with regard to their stay or
departure. Fieldfares and redwings disappear sooner or later
according as the warm weather comes on earlier or later. For I well
remember, after that dreadful winter of 1739-40, that cold north-
east winds continued to blow on through April and May, and that
these kinds of birds (what few remained of them) did not depart as
usual, but were seen lingering about till the beginning of June.
The best authority that we can have for the nidification of the birds
above-mentioned in any district, is the testimony of faunists that
have written professedly the natural history of particular countries.
Now, as to the fieldfare, Linnaeus, in his Fauna Suecica, says of it
that 'maximis in arboribus nidificat'; and of the redwing he says, in
the same place, that 'nidificat in mediis arbusculis, sive sepibus:
ova sex caeruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis.' Hence we may be
assured that fieldfares and redwings breed in Sweden. Scopoli says,
in his Annus Primus, of the woodcock, that 'nupta ad nos venit
circa aequinoctium vernale'; meaning in Tirol, of which he is a
native. And afterwards he adds 'nidificat in paludibus alpinis: ova
ponit, 3-5.' It does not appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed
at all in Austria: but he says 'Avis haec septentrionalium
provinciarum aestivo tempore incola est; ubi plerumque nidificat.
Appropinquante hyeme australiores provincias petit: hinc circa
plenilunium mensis Octobris plerumque Austriam transmigrat.
Tunc rursus circa plenilunium potissimum mensis Martii per
Austriam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales provincias redit. '
For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see Elenchus, etc.,
p. 351. This seems to be a full proof of the migration of
woodcocks; though little is proved concerning the place of
breeding.
P.S. There fell in the county of Rutland, in three weeks of this
present very wet weather, seven inches and an half of rain, which is
more than has fallen in any three weeks for these thirty years past
in that part of the world. A mean quantity in that county one year is
twenty inches and an half.
Letter IX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 1771.
Dear Sir,
You are, I know, no great friend to migration; and the well attested
accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to justify you in
your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave
us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a
torpid state, to slumber away the more uncomfortable months till
the return of the sun and fine weather awakens them.
But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because
migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in
Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he
has ocular demonstration for many weeks together, both spring and
fall: during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the
Straits from north to south, and from south to north, according to
the season. And these vast migrations consist not only of
hirundines but of bee-birds, hoopoes, oro pendolos or golden
thrushes, etc., etc., and also many of our soft-billed summer-birds
of passage; and moreover of birds which never leave us, such as all
the various sorts of hawks and kites. Old Belon, two hundred years
ago, gives a curious account of the incredible armies of hawks and
kites which he saw in the spring-time traversing the Thracian
Bosphorus from Asia to Europe. Besides the above-mentioned, he
remarks that the procession is swelled by whole troops of eagles
and vultures.
Now it is no wonder that birds residing in Africa should retreat
before the sun as it advances, and retire to milder regions, and
especially birds of prey, whose blood being heated with hot animal
food, are more impatient of a sultry climate: but then I cannot help
wondering why kites and hawks, and such hardy birds as are
known to defy all the severity of England, and even of Sweden and
all north Europe, should want to migrate from the south of Europe,
and be dissatisfied with the winters of Andalusia.
It does not appear to me that much stress may be laid on the
difficulty and hazard that birds must run in their migrations, by
reason of vast oceans, cross winds, etc.; because, if we reflect, a
bird may travel from England to the equator without launching out
and exposing itself to boundless seas, and that by crossing the
water at Dover, and again at Gibraltar. And I with the more
confidence advance this obvious remark, because my brother has
always found that some of his birds, and particularly the swallow
kind, are very sparing of their pains in crossing the Mediterranean:
for when arrived at Gibraltar, they do not
... rang'd in figure wedge their way,
... and set forth
Their airy caravan high over seas
Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight ...
MILTON.
but scout and hurry along in little detached parties of six or seven
in a company; and sweeping low, just over the surface of the land
and water, direct their course to the opposite continent at the
narrowest passage they can find. They usually slope across the bay
to the south-west, and so pass over opposite to Tangier, which, it
seems, is the narrowest space.
In former letters we have considered whether it was probable that
woodcocks in moon-shiny nights cross the German ocean from
Scandinavia. As a proof that birds of less speed may pass that sea,
considerable as it is, I shall relate the following incident, which,
though mentioned to have happened so many years ago, was
strictly matter of fact: -- As some people were shooting in the
parish of Trotton, in the county of Sussex, they killed a duck in that
dreadful winter 1708-9, with a silver collar about its neck,* on
which were engraven the arms of the king of Denmark. This
anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a near
relation of mine; and, to the best of my remembrance, the collar
was in the possession of the rector.
(* I have read a like anecdote of a swan.)
At present I do not know anybody near the sea-side that will take
the trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks first
come: if I lived near the sea myself I would soon tell you more of
the matter. One thing I used to observe when I was a sportsman,
that there were times in which woodcocks were so sluggish and
sleepy that they would drop again when flushed just before the
spaniels, nay, just at the muzzle of a gun that had been fired et
them: whether this strange laziness was the effect of a recent
fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say.
Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland,
but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall. In
those two last counties we cannot attribute the failure of them to
the want of warmth: the defect in the west is rather a presumptive
argument that these birds come over to us from the continent at the
narrowest passage, and do not stroll so far westward.
Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do not
dust. I think they do: and if they do, whether they wash also.
The alauda pratensis of Ray was the poor dupe that was educating
the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October last.
Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ousel for Mr.
Tunstal during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to get him
one when they call on us again in April. I am glad that you and that
gentleman saw my Andalusian birds; I hope they answered your
expectation. Royston, or grey crows, are winter birds that come
much about the same time with the woodcock: they, like the
fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent reason for migration; for
as they fare in the winter like their congeners, so might they in all
appearance in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, mistaken?
did he not find a missel-thrush's nest, and take it for the nest of a
fieldfare?
The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon, oenas Raii, is the last winter bird
of passage which appears with us; and is not seen till towards the
end of November: about twenty years ago they abounded in the
district of Selborne; and strings of them were seen morning and
evening that reached a mile or more: but since the beechen woods
have been greatly thinned they are much decreased in number. The
ring-dove, palumbus Raii, stays with us the whole year, and breeds
several times through the summer.
Before I received your letter of October last I had just remarked in
my journal that the trees were unusually green. This uncommon
verdure lasted on late into November; and may be accounted for
from a late spring, a cool and moist summer; but more particularly
from vast armies of chafers, or tree beetles, which, in many places,
reduced whole woods to a leafless naked state. These trees shot
again at Midsummer, and then retained their foliage till very late in
the year.
My musical friend, at whose house I am now visiting, has tried all
the owls that are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe, set at
concert-pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will examine the
nightingales next spring.
I am, etc., etc.
Letter X
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Aug. 1, 1771.
Dear Sir,
From what follows, it will appear that neither owls nor cuckoos
keep to one note. A friend remarks that many (most) of his owls
hoot in B flat: but that one went almost half a note below A. The
pipe he tried their notes by was a common half-crown pitch-pipe,
such as masters use for tuning of harpsichords; it was the common
London pitch.
A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that
the owls about this village hoot in three different keys, in G flat, or
F sharp, in B flat and A flat. He heard two hooting to each other,
the one in A flat, and the other in B flat. Query: Do these different
notes proceed from different species, or only from various
individuals? The same person finds upon trial that the note of the
cuckoo (of which we have but one species) varies in different
individuals; for, about Selborne wood, he found they were mostly
in D: he heard two sing together, the one in D, the other in D sharp,
who made a disagreeable concert: he afterwards heard one in D
sharp, and about Wolmer-forest some in C. As to nightingales, he
says that their notes are so short, and their transitions so rapid, that
he cannot well ascertain their key. Perhaps in a cage, and in a
room, their notes may be more distinguishable. This person has
tried to settle the notes of a swift, and of several other small birds,
but cannot bring them to any criterion.
As I have often remarked that redwings are some of the first birds
that suffer with us in severe weather, it is no wonder at all they
retreat from Scandinavian winters: and much more the ordo of
grallae, who, all to a bird, forsake the northern parts of Europe at
the approach of winter. 'Grallae tanquam conjugatae unanimiter in
fugam se conjiciunt; ne earum unicam quidem inter nos habitantem
invenire possimus; ut enim aestate in australibus degere nequeunt
ob defectum lumbricorum, terramque siccam; ita nec in frigidis ob
eandem causam,' says Eckmarck the Swede, in his ingenious little
treatise called Migrationes Avium, which by all means you ought
to read while your thoughts run on the subject of migration. See
Amoenitates Academicae, vol. iv, p. 565.
Birds may be so circumstanced as to be obliged to migrate in one
country and not in another: but the grallae (which procure their
food from marshes and boggy grounds) must in winter forsake the
more northerly parts of Europe, or perish for want of food.
I am glad you are making inquiries from Linnaeus concerning the
woodcock: it is expected of him that he should be able to account
for the motions and manner of life of the animals of his own Fauna.
Faunists, as you observe, are too apt to acquiesce in bare
descriptions, and a few synonyms: the reason is plain; because all
that may be done at home in a man's study, but the investigation of
the life and conversation of animals, is a concern of much more
trouble and difficulty, and is not to be attained but by the active
and inquisitive, and by those that reside much in the country.
Foreign systematics are, I observe, much too vague in their specific
differences; which are almost universally constituted by one or two
particular marks, the rest of the description running in general
terms. But our countryman, the excellent Mr. Ray, is the only
describer that conveys some precise idea in every term or word,
maintaining his superiority over his followers and imitators in spite
of the advantage of fresh discoveries and modern information.
At this distance of years it is not in my power to recollect at what
periods woodcocks used to be sluggish or alert when I was a
sportsman; but, upon my mentioning this circumstance to a friend,
he thinks he has observed them to be remarkably listless against
snowy foul weather: if this should be the case, then the inaptitude
for flying arises only from an eagerness for food; as sheep are
observed to be very intent on grazing against stormy wet evenings.
I am, etc., etc.
Letter XI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 8, 1772.
Dear Sir,
When I ride about in the winter, and see such prodigious flocks of
various kinds of birds, I cannot help admiring at these
congregations, and wishing that it was in my power to account for
those appearances almost peculiar to the season. The two great
motives which regulate the proceedings of the brute creation are
love and hunger; the former incites animals to perpetuate their
kind, the latter induces them to preserve individuals; whether either
of these should seem to be the ruling passion in the matter of
congregating is to be considered. As to love, that is out of the
question at a time of the year when that soft passion is not
indulged; besides, during the amorous season, such a jealousy
prevails between the male birds that they can hardly bear to be
together in the same hedge or field. Most of the singing and elation
of spirits of that time seem to me to be the effect of rivalry and
emulation: and it is to this spirit of jealousy that I chiefly attribute
the equal dispersion of birds in the spring over the face of the
country.
Now as to the business of food: as these animals are actuated by
instinct to hunt for necessary food, they should not, one would
suppose, crowd together in pursuit of sustenance at a time when it
is most likely to fail: yet such associations do take place in hard
weather chiefly, and thicken as the severity increases. As some
kind of self-interest and self-defence is no doubt the motive for the
proceeding, may it not arise from the helplessness of their state in
such rigorous seasons; as men crowd together, when under great
calamities, though they know not why? Perhaps approximation
may dispel some degree of cold; and a crowd may make each
individual appear safer from the ravages of birds of prey and other
dangers.
If I admire when I see how much congenerous birds love to
congregate, I am the more struck when I see incongruous ones in
such strict amity. If we do not much wonder to see a flock of rooks
usually attended by a train of dews, yet it is strange that the former
should so frequently have a flight of starlings for their satellites. Is
it because rooks have a more discerning scent than their attendants,
and can lead them to spots more productive of food? Anatomists
say that rooks, by reason, of two large nerves which run down
between the eyes into the upper mandible, have a more delicate
feeling in their beaks than other round-billed birds, and can grope
for their meat when out of sight. Perhaps then their associates
attend them on the motive of interest, as greyhounds wait on the
motions of their finders; and as lions are said to do on the yelpings
of jackals. Lapwings and starlings sometimes associate.
Letter XII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
March 9, 1772.
Dear Sir,
As a gentleman and myself were walking on the fourth of last
November round the sea-banks at Newhaven, near the mouth of the
Lewes river, in pursuit of natural knowledge, we were surprised to
see three house-swallows gliding very swiftly by us. That morning
was rather chilly, with the wind at north-west; but the tenor of the
weather for some time before had been delicate, and the noons
remarkably warm. From this incident, and from repeated accounts
which I meet with, I am more and more induced to believe that
many of the swallow kind do not depart from this island; but lay
themselves up in holes and caverns; and do, insect-like and bat-
like, come forth at mild times, and than retire again to their
latebrae. Nor make I the least doubt but that, if I lived at
Newhaven, Seaford, Brighthelmstone, or any of those towns near
the chalk-cliffs of the Sussex coast, by proper observations, I
should see swallows stirring at periods of the winter, when the
noons were soft and inviting, and the sun warm and invigorating.
And I am the more of this opinion from what I have remarked
during some of our late springs, that though some swallows did
make their appearance about the usual time, viz., the thirteenth or
fourteenth of April, yet meeting with an harsh reception, and
blustering cold north-east winds, they immediately withdrew,
absconding for several days, till the weather gave them better
encouragement.
Letter XIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
April 12, 1772.
Dear Sir,
While I was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at the village
near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure of writing to
you. On the first of November I remarked that the old tortoise,
formerly mentioned, began first to dig the ground in order to the
forming its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great
tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore-feet, and
throws it up over its back with its hind; but the motion of its legs is
ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock; and
suitable to the composure of an animal said to be a whole month in
performing one feat of copulation. Nothing can be more assiduous
than this creature night and day in scooping the earth, and forcing
its great body into the cavity; but, as the noons of that season
proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted,
and called forth by the heat in the middle of the day; and though I
continued there till the thirteenth of November, yet the work
remained unfinished. Harsher weather, and frosty mornings, would
have quickened its operations. No part of its behaviour ever struck
me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard
to rain; for though it has a shell that would secure it against the
wheel of a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude
about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on
the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner. If attended
to, it becomes an excellent weather-glass; for as sure as it walks
elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in a
morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally a diurnal
animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. The
tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach as well as
lungs; and can refrain from eating as well as breathing for a great
part of the year. When first awakened it eats nothing; nor again in
the autumn before it retires: through the height of the summer it
feeds voraciously, devouring all the food that comes in its way. I
was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do it kind
offices; for, as soon as the good old lady comes in sight who has
waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbles towards its
benefactress with awkward alacrity; but remains inattentive to
strangers. Thus not only 'the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass has
master's crib,' * but the most abject reptile and torpid of beings
distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the feelings
of gratitude!
* Isaiah i. 3.
I am, etc., etc.
P.S. In about three days after I left Sussex the tortoise retired into
the ground under the hepatica.
Letter XIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, March 26, 1773.
Dear Sir,
The more I reflect on the storge (in Greek) of animals, the more I
am astonished at its effects. Nor is the violence of this affection
more wonderful than the shortness of its duration. Thus every hen
is in her turn the virago of the yard, in proportion to the
helplessness of her brood; and will fly in the face of a dog or a sow
in defence of those chickens, which in a few weeks she will drive
before her with relentless cruelty.
This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the invention, and
sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. Thus an hen, just
become a mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but
with feathers standing on end, wings hovering, and clocking note,
she runs about like one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in
the way of the greatest danger in order to avert it from their
progeny. Thus a partridge will tumble along before a sportsman in
order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In the time of
nidification the most feeble birds will assault the most rapacious.
All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of an
hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very
exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in
the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or eagle to rest near
their station, but would drive them from the hill with an amazing
fury: even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart out
from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the
sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that has young,
she will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness,
but will wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for an
hour together.
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