SELBORNE, _Nov. 28th_, 1768.
Dear Sir,--With regard to the _oedicnemus_, or stone-curlew, I intend to
write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood
these birds seem most to abound, and shall urge him to take particular
notice when they begin to congregate, and afterwards to watch them most
narrowly whether they do not withdraw themselves during the dead of the
winter. When I have obtained information with respect to this
circumstance, I shall have finished my history of the stone-curlew, which
I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near
the truth. This gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and
is abroad early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of
these birds; and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the
Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall expect
that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extraordinary, as
you observe, that a bird so common with us should never struggle to you.
And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it, an
anecdote which the above-mentioned gentleman told me when I was last at
his house; which was that, in a warren joining to his outlet, many daws
(_corvi moneduloe_) build every year in the rabbit-burrows under ground.
The way he and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were
boys, was by listening at the mouths of the holes, and, if they heard the
young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked stick. Some
water-fowls (viz., the puffins) breed, I know, in that manner; but I
should never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat
ground.
Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in,
and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the
interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing
work of antiquity; which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height
of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those
nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round
that place.
One of my neighbours last Saturday, November 26th, saw a martin in a
sheltered bottom: the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking briskly
after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave
this island in the winter.
You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution
concerning the cures done by toads; for, let people advance what they
will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards
deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate anything from
common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of
doubt and suspicion.
Your approbation with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the
ring-ousel gives me satisfaction; and I find you concur with me in
suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure,
I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your
rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most is the very short stay they
make with us, for in about three weeks they are all gone. I shall be
very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their return in
the spring, as they did last year.
I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune had
settled me near the seaside, or near some great river, my natural
propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted with
their productions; but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and in an
upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than to
those common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce.