SELBORNE, _Jan. 15th_, 1770.
Dear Sir,--It was no small matter of satisfaction to me to find that you
were not displeased with my little _methodus_ of birds. If there was any
merit in the sketch, it must be owing to its punctuality. For many
months I carried a list in my pocket of the birds that were to be
remarked, and, as I rode or walked about my business, I noted each day
the continuance or omission of each bird's song, so that I am as sure of
the certainty of my facts as a man can be of any transaction whatsoever.
I shall now proceed to answer the several queries which you put in your
two obliging letters, in the best manner that I am able. Perhaps
Eastwick and its environs, where you heard so very few birds, is not a
woodland country, and therefore not stocked with such songsters. If you
will cast your eye on my last letter, you will find that many species
continued to warble after the beginning of July.
The titlark and yellow-hammer breed late, the latter very late; and
therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song: for I lay it
down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is any incubation
going on there is music. As to the redbreast and wren, it is well known
to the most incurious observer that they whistle the year round, hard
frost excepted--especially the latter.
It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or a less
reed-sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly, and the
last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, they would
require more nice and curious management in a cage than I should be able
to give them: they are both distinguished songsters. The note of the
former has such a wild sweetness that it always brings to my mind those
lines in a song in "As You Like It":
"And tune his merry note
Unto the _wild_ bird's throat."--SHAKESPEARE.
The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the song of
several other birds; but then it has also a hurrying manner, not at all
to its advantage: it is notwithstanding a delicate polyglot.
It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night; perhaps only
caged birds do so. I once knew a tame redbreast in a cage that always
sang as long as candles were in the room; but in their wild state no one
supposes they sing in the night.
I should be almost ready to doubt the fact that there are to be seen much
fewer birds in July than in any former month, notwithstanding so many
young are hatched daily. Sure I am that it is far otherwise with respect
to the swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously as the summer
advances: and I saw at the time mentioned many hundreds of young wagtails
on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered the meadows. If the
matter appears as you say in the other species, may it not be owing to
the dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed by
the leaves.
Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs of woodcocks and
snipes: but nothing ever occurred that helped to explain to me what their
subsistence might be: all that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among
which lay many pellucid small gravels.