SELBORNE, _September 9th_, 1767.
It will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts
with regard to the _falco_; as to its weight, breadth, etc., I wish I had
set them down at the time; but, to the best of my remembrance, it weighed
two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing,
thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of
its eyelids a bright yellow. As it had been killed some days, and the
eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the
pupils and the irides.
The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of
hoopoes (_upupa_), which came several years ago in the summer, and
frequented an ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my garden, for
some weeks. They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the
walks, many times in the day; and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet;
but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who would never let them
be at rest.
Three grossbeaks (_loxia coccothraustes_) appeared some years ago in my
fields, in the winter; one of which I shot. Since that, now and then,
one is occasionally seen in the same dead season.
A crossbill (_loxia curvirostra_) was killed last year in this
neighbourhood.
Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village,
yield nothing but the bull's head or miller's thumb (_gobius fluviatilis
capitatus_), the trout (_trutta fluviatilis_), the eel (_anguilla_), the
lampern (_lampoetra parva et fluviatilis_), and the stickleback
(_pisciculus aculeatus_).
We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great river,
and therefore see but little of sea birds. As to wild fowls, we have a
few teems of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and
multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in
the forest.
Having some acquaintance with the tame brown owl, I find that it casts up
the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner
of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.
The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant
supply of fresh mice; whereas the young of the brown owl will eat
indiscriminately all that is brought: snails, rats, kittens, puppies,
magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I
observed was about the 21st August; it was a straggler.
Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and _reguli non cristati_, still
appear; but I have seen no black-caps lately.
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College quadrangle
in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and
settling on the parapet, so late as the 20th November.
At present I know only two species of bats, the common _vespertilio
murinus_ and the _vespertilio auribus_.
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take
flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought
its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the
manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in
shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was
worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most
acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the
notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no
improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I
saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon
a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease
from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware
of, but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner.
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface as they
play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only for
the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over
them in the greatest plenty. As I was going some years ago, pretty late,
in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer's evening, I think I
saw myriads of bats between the two places. The air swarmed with them
all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a time.