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magnificent birds appear by no means to be their tails; those long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards the females.

I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus agogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange; such are, I think, usually flat.

LETTER XXXVI.

Sept., 1771.

DEAR SIR,—The suinmer through I have seen but two of that large species of bat which I call vespertilio altivolans, from its manner of feeding high in the air: I procured one of them, and found it to be a male; and made no doubt, as they accompanied together, that the other was a female: but, happening in an evening or two to procure the other likewise, I was somewhat disappointed, when it appeared to be also of the same sex. This circumstance, and the great scarcity of this sort, at least in these parts, occasions some suspicions in my mind whether it is really a species, or whether it may not be the male part of the more known species, one of which may supply many females; as is known to be the case in sheep, and some other quadrupeds. But this doubt can only be cleared by a farther examination, and some attention to the sex, of more specimens: all that I know at present is, that my two were amply furnished with the parts of generation much resembling those of a boar.

In the extent of their wings they measured fourteen inches and a half: and four inches and an half from the nose to the tip of the tail: their heads were large, their nostrils bilobated, their shoulders broad and muscular;

and their whole bodies fleshy and plump. Nothing could be more sleek and soft than their fur, which was of a bright chestnut colour; their maws were full of food, but so macerated that the quality could not be distinguished; their livers, kidneys, and hearts, were large, and their bowels covered with fat. They weighed each, when entire, full one ounce and one drachm. Within the ear there was somewhat of a peculiar structure that I did not understand perfectly; but refer it to the observation of the curious anatomist. These creatures send forth a very rancid and offensive smell.

LETTER XXXVII.

Selborne, 1771.

DEAR SIR,-On the twelfth of July I had a fair opportunity of contemplating the motions of the caprimulgus, or fern-owl, as it was playing round a large oak that swarmed with scarabaei solstitiales, or fern-chafers.* The powers of its wing were wonderful, exceeding, if possible, the various evolutions and quick turns of the swallow genus. But the circumstance that pleased me most was that I saw it distinctly, more than once, put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of the head, deliver somewhat into its mouth. If it takes any part of its prey with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a serrated claw.

Swallows and martins, the bulk of them, I mean, have forsaken us sooner this year than usual; for, on September the twenty-second, they rendezvoused in a neighbour's walnut-tree, where it seemed

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probable they had taken up their lodging for the night. At the dawn of the day, which was foggy, they arose all together in infinite numbers, occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their wings against the hazy air, as

* May bug and June bug.-R. K.

MAY BUG.

might be heard to a considerable distance: since that no flock has appeared, only a few stragglers.

Some swifts staid late, till the twenty-second of Augusta rare instance! for they usually withdraw within the first week.*

On September the twenty-fourth three or four ring ousels. appeared in my fields for the first time this season: how punctual are these visitors in their autumnal and spring migrations!

LETTER XXXVIII.

Selborne, March 15, 1773.

DEAR SIR,-By my journal for last autumn it appears that the house-martins bred very late, and staid very late in these parts; for, on the first of October, I saw young martins in their nests nearly fledged; and again, on the twenty-first of October, we had at the next house a nest full of young martins just ready to fly; and the old ones were hawking for insects with great alertness. The next morning the brood forsook their nest, and were flying round the village. From this day I never saw one of the swallow kind till November the third; when twenty, or perhaps thirty, house-martins were playing all day long by the side of the hanging wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak birds, some of which were nestlings twelve days ago, shift their quarters at this late season of the year to the other side of the northern tropic? Or rather, is it not more probable that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more northern naturalist would say), may become their hybernaculum, and afford them a ready and obvious retreat?

We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ringousels every week. Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest of Berę, on the southern verge of this county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal, and not extended to the continent southward, if they do at first come at all from the northern parts of this island only, and not from the north of Europe. Come from whence they will, it is plain, from the fearless disregard that they show for men or

*See Letter liii. to Mr. Barrington.-G. W.

guns, that they have been little accustomed to places of much resort.* Navigators mention that in the Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds are so little acquainted with the human form that they settle on men's shoulders; and have no more dread of a sailor than they would have of a goat that was grazing. A young man at Lewes, in Sussex, assured me that about seven years ago ring-ousels abounded so about that town in the autumn that he killed sixteen himself in one afternoon he added farther, that some had appeared since in every autumn; but he could not find that any had been observed before the season in which he shot so many. I myself have found these birds in little parties in the autumn cantoned all along the Sussexdowns, wherever there were shrubs and bushes, from Chichester to Lewes ; particularly in the autumn of 1770.

I am, etc.

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DEAR SIR, AS you desire me to send you such observations as may occur, I take the liberty of making the following remarks, that you may, according as you think me right or wrong, admit or reject what I here advance, in your intended new edition of the British Zoology.

The osprey was shot about a year ago at Frinsham-pond a great lake, at about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a plough and devouring a fish it used to precipitate itself into the water, and so take its prey by surprise.

A great ash-coloured butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted-park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne: they are rara aves in this country.

Crows§ go in pairs the whole year round.

Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beachy-head and on all the cliffs of the Sussex coast.¶

* Our experience of this bird is that it is much bolder when in the South of England on its way to or from its winter quarters than it is in its breeding haunts. Hunger and fatigue no doubt account for this.-R. K.

+ British Zoology, vol. i., p 128

W.

‡ p. 161. § p 167. || p. 198.

¶ Unfortunately long since disappeared as a breeding species on the Sussex coast, and still growing rarer as a British bird.-R. K.

H

The common wild-pigeon,* or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the south of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November; is usually the latest winter bird of passage. Before our

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beechen woods were SO much destroyed we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile together as they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us early in spring; where do they breed?

OSPREY AND EYRIE.

The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel birdt the storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring in blowing showery weather; its song often commences with the year with us it builds much in orchards.

A gentleman assures me that he has taken the nests of ring-ousels on Dartmoor: they build in banks on the sides of streams.

Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they play and toy about on the wing; and particularly while they are descending, and sometimes as they stand on the ground.

Adamson's || testimony seems to me to be a very poor *British Zoology, vol. i., p. 216. p. 224. p 229. § vol. ii., p. 237. [The bird here described is clearly a tree pipit, although our author elsewhere calls the meadow pipit a "titlark."-R. K.] || p. 242.-G. W.

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