FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, _Feb. 12th_, 1772.
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, and 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 of 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 moonshiny 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.
At present I do not know anybody near the seaside 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-ouzel 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; it 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.