The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 | Page 7

river Arun.
I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of ring-ousels,
and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to this season
of the year; as I had formerly remarked them in the month of October
all the way from Chichester to Lewes wherever there were any shrubs
and covert: but not one bird of this sort came within my observation. I
only saw a few larks and whin-chats, some rooks, and several kites and
buzzards.
About Midsummer a flight of cross-bills comes to the pine-groves
about this house, but never makes any long stay.
The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still continues
in this garden; and retired under ground about the 20th November, and
came out again for one day on the 30th: it lies now buried in a wet
swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at
present in mud and mire!
Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which seem
to get their livelihood very easily; for they spend the greatest part of the
day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. These rooks retire
every evening all the winter from this rookery, where they only call by
the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods: at the dawn of day
they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a
flight of daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers.
I am, etc.

LETTER XVIII.
SELBORNE, Jan. 29th, 1774.

Dear Sir,--The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the
first comer of all the British hirundines; and appears in general on or
about 13th April, as I have remarked from many years' observation.
Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier; and, in particular,
when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day together on a
sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out later than
the middle of March, and often happened early in February.
It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and
mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors
happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful
springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time. A
circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration; since
it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its hybernaculum
just at hand, than return for a week or two to warmer latitudes.
The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds
altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out-houses against
the rafters; and so she did in Virgil's time:
. . . "Ante Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo."
In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the barn
swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no chimneys
to houses, except they are English-built: in these countries she
constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and open
halls.
Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place; as we have
known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, through which
chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure: but in
general with us this hirundo breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt
those stacks where there is a constant fire, no doubt for the sake of
warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a
fire; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards the
perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with some
degree of wonder.

Five or six or more feet down the chimney does this little bird begin to
form her nest about the middle of May, which consists, like that of the
house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixed with
short pieces of straw to render it tough and permanent; with this
difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric,
that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep dish: this
nest is lined with fine grasses and feathers, which are often collected as
they float in the air.
Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long in
ascending and descending with security through so narrow a pass.
When hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibrations of her
wings acting on the confined air occasion a rumbling like thunder. It is
not improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so
low in the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, and
particularly from