partridges, and pheasants, etc., are pulveratrices, such as dust
themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding
themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds that
dust themselves never wash: and I once thought that those birds that
wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for
common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequency seen
grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great
washers. Does not the skylark dust?
Query.—Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method of
purification from these pulveratrices? because I find from travellers
of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a sandy desert
where no water is to be found, at stated hours he strips off his
clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over with sand or dust.
A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the nest of a
small bird on the ground; and that it was fed by the little bird. I
went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found that it was a
young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become vastly too
big for its nest, appearing
… in tenui re
Majores pennas nido extendisse …
and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it,
for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting with its wings
like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a distance, hovering
about with meat in its mouth, and expressing the greatest solicitude.
In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond; and found,
after some observation, that they were feeding on the libellulae, or
dragon-flies; some of which they caught as they settled on the weeds,
and some as they were on the wing. Notwithstanding what Linnaeus says,
I cannot be induced to believe that they are birds of prey.
This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of at
Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks (loxiae
curvirostrae) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves belonging to
this house; the water-ousel is said to haunt the mouth of the Lewes
river, near Newhaven; and the Cornish chough builds, I know, all along
the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore.
I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my
newly-discovered migrators) scattered, at intervals, all along the
Sussex-downs from Chichester to Lewes. Let them come from whence they
will, it looks very auspicious that they are cantoned along the coast
in order to pass the channel when severe weather advances. They visit
us again in April, as it should seem, in their return; and are not to
be found in the dead of winter. It is remarkable that they are very
tame, and seem to have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a
person with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs near
Brighthelmstone. No doubt you are acquainted with the Sussex-downs: the
prospects and rides round Lewes are most lovely!
As I rode along near the coast I kept a very sharp lookout in the lanes
and woods, hoping I might, at this time of the year, have discovered
some of the summer short-winged birds of passage crowding towards the
coast in order for their departure: but it was very extraordinary that
I never saw a red-start, white-throat, black-cap, uncrested wren,
fly-catcher, etc. And I remember to have made the same remark in former
years, as I usually come to this place annually about this time. The
birds most common along the coast at present are the stone-chatters,
whin-chats, buntings, linnets, some few wheatears, titlarks, etc.
Swallows and house-martins abound yet, induced to prolong their stay by
this soft, still, dry season.
A land-tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little
walled court belonging to the house where I now am visiting, retires
under ground about the middle of November, and comes forth again about
the middle of April. When it first appears in the spring it discovers
very little inclination towards food; but in the height of summer grows
voracious: and then as the summer declines its appetite declines; so
that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky
plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are its favourite
dish. In a neighbouring village one was kept till by tradition it was
supposed to be an hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in
such a poor reptile!
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 at 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,