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Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above by some
anecdotes which I probably may have mentioned before in
conversation, yet you will, I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake
of illustration.
The fly-catcher of the Zoology (the stoparola of Ray), builds every
year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A pair of
these little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a
naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the
inconvenience that followed. But an hot sunny season coming on
before the brood was half fledged, the reflection of the wall
became insupportable, and must inevitably have destroyed the
tender young, had not affection suggested an expedient, and
prompted the parent-birds to hover over the nest all the hotter
hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping for breath,
they screened off the heat from their suffering offspring.
A farther instance I once saw of notable sagacity in a willow-wren,
which had built in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend and
myself had observed as she sat in her nest; but were particularly
careful not to disturb her, though we saw she eyed us with some
degree of jealousy. Some days after as we passed that way we were
desirous of remarking how this brood went on; but no nest could be
found, till I happened to take up a large bundle of long green moss,
as it were, carelessly thrown over the nest, in order to dodge the
eye of any impertinent intruder.
A still more remarkable mixture of sagacity and instinct occurred
to me one day as my people were pulling off the lining of an
hotbed, in order to add some fresh dung. From out of the side of
this bed leaped an animal with great agility that made a most
grotesque figure; nor was it without great difficulty that it could be
taken; when it proved to be a large white-bellied field-mouse with
three or four young clinging to her teats by their mouths and feet. It
was amazing that the desultory and rapid motions of this dam
should not oblige her litter to quit their hold, especially when it
appeared that they were so young as to be both naked and blind!
To these instances of tender attachment, many more of which
might be daily discovered by those that are studious of nature, may
be opposed that rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of the
otorge (in Greek), which induces some females of the brute
creation to devour their young because their owners have handled
them too freely, or removed them from place to place! Swine, and
sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this
horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an
abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much
amazed; since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are
capable of any enormity: but why the parental feelings of brutes,
that usually flow in one most uniform tenor, should sometimes be
so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself
to determine.
I am, etc.
Letter XV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, July 8, 1773.
Dear Sir,
Some young men went down lately to a pond on the verge of
Wolmer-forest to hunt flappers, or young wild-ducks, many of
which they caught, and, among the rest, some very minute yet well-
fledged wild-fowls alive, which, upon examination, I found to be
teals. I did not know till then that teals ever bred in the south of
England, and was much pleased with the discovery: this I look
upon as a great stroke in natural history.
We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white owls that
constantly breed under the eaves of this church. As I have paid
good attention to the manner of life of these birds during their
season of breeding, which lasts the summer through, the following
remarks may not perhaps be unacceptable: -- About an hour before
sunset (for then the mice begin to run) they sally forth in quest of
prey, and hunt all round the hedges of meadows and small
enclosures for them, which seem to be their only food. In this
irregular country we can stand on an eminence and see them beat
the fields over like a setting-dog, and often drop down in the grass
or corn. I have minuted these birds with my watch for an hour
together, and have found that they return to their nests, the one or
the other of them, about once in five minutes; reflecting at the
same time on the adroitness that every animal is possessed of as
regards the well-being of itself and offspring. But a piece of
address, which they show when they return loaded, should not, I
think, be passed over in silence. -- As they take their prey with their
claws, so they carry it in their claws to their nest: but, as the feet
are necessary in their ascent under the tiles, they constantly perch
first on the roof of the chancel, and shift the mouse from their
claws to their bill, that the feet may be at liberty to take hold of the
plate on the wall as they are rising under the eaves.
White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at all:
all that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood
kinds. The white owl does indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous
manner; and these menaces well answer the intention of
intimidating: for I have known a whole village up in arms on such
an occasion, imagining the church-yard to be full of goblins and
spectres. White owls also often scream horribly as they fly along;
from this screaming probably arose the common people's
imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think
attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges
of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is
remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the
wings of these birds should not make much resistance or rushing,
that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon a
nimble and watchful quarry.
While I am talking of owls, it may not be improper to mention
what I was told by a gentleman of the county of Wilts. As they
were grubbing a vast hollow pollard-ash that had been the mansion
of owls for centuries, he discovered at the bottom a mass of matter
that at first he could not account for. After examination, he found it
was a congeries of the bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and
bats) that had been heaping together for ages, being cast up in
pellets out of the crops of many generations of inhabitants. For
owls cast up the bones, fur, and feathers of what they devour, after
the manner of hawks. He believes, he told me, that there were
bushels of this kind of substance.
When brown owls hoot their throats swell as big as an hen's egg. I
have known an owl of this species live a full year without any
water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey.
When owls fly they stretch out their legs behind them as a balance
to their large heavy heads; for as most nocturnal birds have large
eyes and ears they must have large heads to contain them. Large
eyes I presume are necessary to collect every ray of light, and large
concave ears to command the smallest degree of sound or noise.
I am, etc.
The hirundines are a most inoffensive, harmless, entertaining,
social, and useful tribe of birds: they touch no fruit in our gardens;
delight, all except one species, in attaching themselves to our
houses; amuse us with their migrations, songs, and marvellous
agility; and clear our outlets from the annoyances of gnats and
other troublesome insects. Some districts in the south seas, near
Guiaquil,* are desolated, it seems, by the infinite swarms of
venomous mosquitoes, which fill the air, and render those coasts
insupportable. It would be worth inquiring whether any species of
hirundines is found in those regions. Whoever contemplates the
myriads of insects that sport in the sunbeams of a summer evening
in this country, will soon be convinced to what a degree our
atmosphere would be choked with them was it not for the friendly
interposition of the swallow tribe.
Many species of birds have their particular lice; but the hirundines
alone seem to be annoyed with dipterous insects, which infest
every species, and are so large, in proportion to themselves, that
they must be truly irksome and injurious to them. These are the
hippoboscae hirundinis with narrow subulated wings, abounding in
every nest; and are hatched by the warmth of the bird's own body
during incubation, and crawl about under its feathers.
A species of them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England
under the name of forest-fly; and, to some, of side-fly, from its
running sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about
the groins, of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north,
are rendered half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our own
breed little regards them.
The curious Reaumur discovered the large eggs, or rather pupae, of
these flies as big as the flies themselves, which he hatched in his
own bosom. Any person that will take the troupe to examine the
old nests of either species of swallows may find in them the black
shining cases of the pupae of these insects: but for other
particulars, too long for this place, we refer the reader to L'Histoire
d'Insectes of that admirable entomologist. Tom. iv. pi. ii.
Letter XVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Nov. 20, 1773.
Dear Sir,
In obedience to your injunctions I sit down to give you some
account of the house-martin, or martlet; and, if my monography of
this little domestic and familiar bird should happen to meet with
your approbation, I may probably soon extend my inquiries to the
rest of the British hirundines -- the swallow, the swift, and the
bank-martin.
A few house-martins begin to appear about the sixteenth of April;
usually some few days later than the swallow. For some time after
they appear the hirundines in general pay no attention to the
business of nidification, but play and sport about either to recruit
from the fatigue of their journey, if they do migrate at all, or else
that their blood may recover its true tone and texture after it has
been so long benumbed by the severities of winter. About the
middle of May, if the weather be fine, the martin begins to think in
earnest of providing a mansion for its family. The crust or shell of
this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most
readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little
bits of broken straws to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird
often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting
ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation
firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. On this
occasion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports
itself by strongly inclining its tail against the wall, making that a
fulcrum; and thus steadied it works and plasters the materials into
the face of the brick or stone. But then, that this work may not,
while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own weight, the
provident architect has prudence and forbearance enough not to
advance her work too fast; but by building only in the morning, and
by dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it
sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems to be a
sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen when they build
mud-walls (informed at first perhaps by this lithe bird) raise but a
moderate layer at a time, and then desist; lest the work should
become top-heavy, and so be ruined by is own weight. By this
method in about ten or twelve days is formed an hemispheric nest
with a small aperture towards the top, strong, compact, and warm;
and perfectly fitted for all the purposes for which it was intended.
But then nothing is more common than for the house-sparrow, as
soon as the shell is finished, to seize on it as is own, to eject the
owner, and to line it after is own manner.
After so much labour is bestowed in erecting a mansion, as nature
seldom works in vain, martins win breed on for several years
together in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and
secure from the injuries of weather. The shed or crust of the nest is
a sort of rustic work full of knobs and protuberances on the
outside: nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed
with any exactness at all; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for
incubation, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers, and
sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven with wool. In this nest
they tread, or engender, frequently during the time of building; and
the hen lays from three to five white eggs.
At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and
helpless condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out
what comes away from their young. Was it not for this affectionate
cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in
so deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the
quadruped creation the same neat precaution is made use of;
particularly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick away what
proceeds from their young. But in birds there seems to be a
particular provision, that the dung of nestlings is enveloped into a
tough kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed off without
soiling or daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways, the
young perform this office for themselves in a little time by
thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of
small birds presently arrive at their elikia (in Greek) or full growth,
they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all day with
their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the
nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a time the
young are fed on the wing by their parents; but the feat is done by
so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person must
have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be
able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for
themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the
business of a second brood: while the first flight, shaken off and
rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the
birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and
evenings round towers and steeples, and on the mobs of churches
and houses. These congregations usually begin to take place about
the first week in August; and therefore we may conclude that by
that time the first flight is pretty well over. The young of this
species do not quit their abodes all together; but the more forward
birds get abroad some days before the rest. These approaching the
eaves of buildings, and playing about before them, make people
think that several old ones attend one nest. They are often
capricious in fixing on a nesting place, beginning many edifices,
and leaving them unfinished; but when once a nest is completed in
a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons. Those which breed
in a ready finished house get the start in hatching of those that
build new by ten days or a fortnight. These industrious artificers
are at their labours in the long days before four in the morning:
when they fix than materials they plaster them on with their chins,
moving their heads with a quick vibratory motion. They dip and
wash as they fly sometimes in very hot weather, but not so
frequency as swallows. It has been observed that martins usually
build to a north-east or north-west aspect, that the heat of the sun
may not crack and destroy their nests: but instances are also
remembered where they bred for many years in vast abundance in
an hot stifled inn-yard, against a wall facing to the south.
Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation: but in this
neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the contrary
at an house without eaves in an exposed district, where some
martins build year by year in the corners of the windows. But, as
the corners of these windows (which face to the south-east and
south-west) are too shallow, the nests are washed down every hard
rain; and yet these birds drudge on to no purpose from summer to
summer, without changing their aspect or house. It is a piteous
sight to see them labouring when half their nest is washed away
and bringing dirt .... 'generis lapsi sarcire ruinas.' Thus is instinct a
most wonderful unequal faculty; in some instances so much above
reason, in other respects so far below it! Martins love to frequent
towns, especially if there are great lakes and rivers at hand; nay,
they even affect the close air of London. And I have not only seen
them nesting in the Borough, but even in the Strand and Fleet-
street; but then it was obvious from the dinginess of their aspect
that their feathers partook of the filth of that sooty atmosphere.
Martins are by far the least agile of the four species; their wings
and tails are short, and therefore they are not capable of such
surprising turns and quick and glancing evolutions as the swallow.
Accordingly they make use of a placid easy motion in a middle
region of the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and never
sweeping long together over the surface of the ground or water.
They do not wander far for food, but affect sheltered districts, over
some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in some hollow vale,
especially in windy weather. They breed the latest of all the
swallow kind: in 1772 they had nestlings on to October the twenty-
first, and are never without unfledged young as late as Michaelmas.
As the summer declines the congregating docks increase in
numbers daily by the constant accession of the second broods, till
at last they swarm in myriads upon myriads round the villages on
the Thames, darkening the face of the sky as they frequent the aits
of that river, where they roost. They retire, the bulk of them I
mean, in vast flocks together about the beginning of October: but
have appeared of late years in a considerable eight in this
neighbourhood, for one day or two, as late as November the third
and sixth, after they were supposed to have been gone for more
than a fortnight. They therefore withdraw with us the latest of any
species. Unless these birds ate very short-lived indeed, or unless
they do not return to the district where they are bred, they must
undergo vast devastations somehow, sad somewhere; for the birds
that return yearly bear no manner of proportion to the birds that
retire.
House-martins ate distinguished from that congeners by having that
legs coveted with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are
no songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their
nests. During the time of breeding they are often greatly molested
with fleas.
I am, etc.
Letter XVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Ringmer, near Lewes, Dec. 9, 1773.
Dear Sir,
I received your last favour just as I was setting out for this place;
and am pleased to find that my monography met with your
approbation. My remarks are the result of many years' observation;
and are, I trust, true on the whole: though I do not pretend to say
that they are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer
ought not make many additions, since subjects of this kind are
inexhaustible.
If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable society,
you are at liberty to lay it before them; and they win consider it, I
hope, as it was intended, as an humble attempt to promote a more
minute inquiry into natural history; into the life and conversation of
animals. Perhaps hereafter I may be induced to take the house-
swallow under consideration, and from that proceed to the rest of
the British hirundines.
Though I have now travelled the Sussex-downs upwards of thirty
years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with
fresh admiration year by year; and think I see new beauties every
time I traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester eastward
as far as East-Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the
South Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass
along you command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one
hand, and the broad downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to
visit a family* just at the foot of these hips, and was so ravished
with the prospect from Plumpton-plain near Lewes, that he
mentions those scopes in his Wisdom of God in the Works of the
Creation with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal to
anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe.
(* Mr. Courthope, of Danny.)
For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and
amusing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk-hills in preference
to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless.
Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to
convey to you the same idea, but I never contemplate these
mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to
growth in their gentle swellings and smooch fungus-like
protuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes,
that carry at once the air of vegetative dilation and expansion.... Or
was there ever a time when these immense masses of calcareous
matter were drown into fermentation by some adventitious
moisture; were raised and leavened into such shapes by some
plastic power; and so made to swell and heave their broad backs
into the sky so much above the less animated clay of the wild
below?
By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills that have
been taken round my house, I should suppose that these hills
surmount the wild at au average at about the rate of five hundred
feet.
One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep: from the westward
till you get to the river Adur all the flocks have horns, and smooth
white faces, and white legs; and a hornless sheep is rarely to be
seen: but as soon as you pass the river eastward, and mount
Beeding-hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, or, as they call
them, poll-sheep; and have moreover black faces with a white tuft
of wool on their foreheads, and speckled and spotted legs: so that
you would think that the flocks of Laban were pasturing on one
side of the stream, and the variegated breed of his son-in-law Jacob
were cantoned along on the other. And this diversity holds good
respectively on each side from the valley of Bramber and Beeding
to the eastward, and westward all the whole length of the downs. If
you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the
case has been so from time immemorial: and smile at your
simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of these two
different breeds might not be reversed? However, an intelligent
friend of mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment;
and has this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a
parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western
ewes. The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the
finest wool.
As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a
season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look-out as
possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer
short-winged birds of passage. We make great inquiries concerning
the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without examining enough
into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter; for,
entre nous, the disappearing of the latter is more marvellous than
that of the former, and much more unaccountable. The hirundines,
if they please, are certainly capable of migration; and yet no doubt
are often found in a torpid state: but redstarts, nightingales, white-
throats, black-caps, etc., etc., are very ill provided for long flights;
have never been once found, as I ever heard of, in a torpid state,
and yet can never be supposed, in such troops, from year to year to
dodge and elude the eyes of the curious and inquisitive, which
from day to day discern the other small birds that are known to
abide our winters. But, notwithstanding all my care, I saw nothing
like a summer bird of passage: and, what is more strange, not one
wheat-ear, though they abound so in the autumn as to be a
considerable perquisite to the shepherds that take them; and though
many are to be seen to my knowledge all the winter through in
many parts of the south of England. The most intelligent shepherds
tell me that some few of these birds appear on the downs in March,
and then withdraw to breed probably in warrens and stone-quarries:
now and then a nest is plowed up in a fallow on the downs under a
furrow, but it is thought a rarity. At the time of wheat-harvest they
begin to be taken in great numbers; are sent for sale in vast
quantities to Brighthelmstone and Tunbridge; and appear at the
tables of all the gentry that entertain with any degree of elegance.
About Michaelmas they retire and are seen no more till March.
Though these birds are, when in season, in great plenty on the
south downs round Lewes, yet at East-Bourn, which is the eastern
extremity of those downs, they abound much more. One thing is
very remarkable -- that though in the height of the season so many
hundreds of dozens are taken, yet they never are seen to flock; and
it is a rare thing to see more than three or four at a time: so that
there must be a perpetual flitting and constant progressive
succession. It does not appear that any wheat-ears are taken to the
westward of Houghton-bridge, which stands on the river Arun.
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