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 στοργὴ 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.
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 στοργὴ, 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.
* See Ulloa’s Travels.
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 ἡλικία 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.