SWIFTS.

66

173 known birds, the hirundo melba, or great white-bellied swift of Gibraltar, excepted; for it is so disposed as to carry omnes quatuor digitos anticos," all its four toes forward: besides, the least toe, which should be the back toe, consists of one bone alone, and the other three only of two apiece,- —a construction most rare and peculiar, but nicely adapted to the purposes in which their feet are employed. This, and some peculiarities attending the nostrils and under mandible, have induced a discerning naturalist* to suppose that this species might constitute a genus per se.†

In London, a party of swifts frequent the Tower, playing and feeding over the river just below the Bridge; others haunt some of the churches of the Borough next the fields, but do not venture, like the house-marten, into the close, crowded part of the town.

The Swedes have bestowed a very pertinent name on this swallow, calling it ring-swala, from the perpetual rings, or circles, that it takes round the scene of its nidification.

Swifts feed on coleoptera, or small beetles with hard cases over their wings, as well as on the softer insects; but it does not appear how they can procure gravel to grind their food, as swallows do, since they never settle on the ground. Young ones, overrun with hippobosca, are sometimes found, under their nests, fallen to the ground, the number of vermin rendering their abode insupportable any longer. They frequent, in this village, several abject cottages; yet a succession still haunts the same unlikely roofs-a good proof this that the same birds return to the same spots. As they must stoop very low to get up under these humble eaves, cats lie in wait, and sometimes catch them on the wing.

On the 5th of July, 1775, I again untiled part of a roof over the nest of a swift. The dam sat in the nest; but so strongly was she affected by natural orogy for her brood, which she supposed to be in danger, that, regardless of her own safety, she would not stir, but lay sullenly by them, permitting herself to be taken in hand. The squab young we brought down, and placed on the grass-plot, where they tumbled about, and were as helpless as a new-born child. While we contemplated their naked bodies, their unwieldy, John Antony Scopoli, of Carniola, M.D.

+ This difference of character from that of the swallow tribe, has been laid hold of as a generic distinction by Illiger, under the name of cypsclus. - ED.

disproportioned abdomina, and their heads too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected that these shiftless beings, in a little more than a fortnight, would be able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor, and, perhaps, in their emigration, must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So soon does Nature advance small birds to their xía, or state of perfection; while the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious!

LETTER LXII.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

SELBORNE, September, 1774.

DEAR SIR,-By means of a straight cottage chimney, I had an opportunity this summer of remarking, at my leisure, how swallows ascend and descend through the shaft; but my pleasure in contemplating the address with which this feat was performed, to a considerable depth in the chimney, was somewhat interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes might undergo the same fate with those of Tobit.*

Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at what times the different species of hirundines arrived this spring in three very distant counties of this kingdom. With us, the swallow was seen first on April the 4th; the swift on April the 24th; the bank-marten on April the 12th; and the housemarten not till April the 30th. At South Zele, Devonshire, swallows did not arrive till April the 25th; swifts, in plenty, on May the 1st; and house-martens not till the middle of May. At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th; swallows, April the 29th; house-martens, May the 1st. Do these different dates, in such distant districts, prove any thing for or against migration?

A farmer near Weyhill fallows his land with two teams of asses, one of which works till noon, and the other in the afternoon. When these animals have done their work, they are penned all night, like sheep, on the fallow. In the winter, they are confined and foddered in a yard, and make plenty of dung.

Linnæus says, that hawks" paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat;" but it appears to me, that, during

* Tobit, ü. 10.

MISSEL-THRUSH- RING-DOVE-CROPS.

175

that period, many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by their feathers left in lanes and under hedges.

The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving such birds as approach its nest, with great fury, to a distance. The Welsh call it pen y llwyn, the head, or master of the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he haunts; and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. In general, he is very successful in the defence of his family: but once I observed in my garden, that several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a missel-thrush; the dams defended their mansion with great vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris et focis; but numbers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive.*

In the season of nidification, the wildest birds are comparatively tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are continually frequented; † and the missel-thrush, though most shy and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in my garden, close to a walk where people are passing all day long.

Wall-fruit abounds with me this year; but my grapes, that used to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond all precedent and this is not the worst of the story; for the same ungenial weather, the same black cold solstice, has injured the more necessary fruits of the earth, and discoloured and blighted our wheat. The crop of hops promises to be very large.

Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half

all come

*No kind of animal food is despised by this carnivorous depredator. Young lambs, poultry, eggs, fish, carrion, insects, and fruit, within the range of his voracious appetite. He is a great enemy to all young birds; and, in many places, commits extensive ravages on the brood and eggs of game. In various places of England and Ireland, a reward is given for their heads, at the quarter sessions. The jay is another beautiful bird; but, like his congener, the magpie, is a most destructive knave amongst smaller birds and their eggs.

ED.

+ During our residence in Fife, a pair of ring-doves incubated in a larch tree, close to a walk in the garden, and not more than twenty-five yards from the house, although this walk was frequented many times during the day, and there brought up a brood. These young doves built in a tree not far distant from the others. The old birds returned in the following summer, and continued to breed there every season while I remained; as did also part of their progeny, for we had three nests within the flower garden alone, which was next to the house, and without any wall or hedge intervening. -ED.

176

SUBSISTENCE OF BIRDS IN WINTER.

disqualify me for a naturalist; for, when those fits are upon me, I lose all the pleasing notices and little intimations arising from rural sounds; and May is to me as silent and mute, with respect to the notes of birds, &c. as August. My eyesight is, thank God, quick and good; but with respect to the other sense, I am, at times, disabled,

And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

LETTER LXIII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft-billed birds, that continue with us the winter through, subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wry-neck (so much resembling the hardy race of woodpeckers) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts, without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while he keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know. *

I have no reason to doubt, but that the soft-billed birds, which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species of wagtails, in severe weather, haunt shallow streams, near their spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus phryganeæ, &c.

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings; and in mild weather, they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see, that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night. Redbreasts and wrens, in the winter, haunt outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies, that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But

This bird inhabits Britain, from the Landsend to the Shetland Islands, as also Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is sometimes migratory. See our note, page 42. - ED.

See Derham's Physico- Theology, p. 235.

Both redbreasts and wrens approach villages and towns in winter, and will eat crumbs of bread, and other farinaceous substances. We

the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself.

Every species of titmouse winters with us; they have what I call a kind of intermediate bill, between the hard and the soft, between the Linnæan genera of fringilla and motacilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for succour, in the severest seasons, to houses and neighbourhoods, and that is the delicate longtailed titmouse, which is almost as minute as the goldencrowned wren: but the blue titmouse, or nun, (parus cæruleus,) the cole-mouse, (parus ater,) the great black-headed titmouse, (fringillago,) and the marsh titmouse, (parus palustris,) all resort, at times, to buildings; and in hard weather particularly. The great titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses; and, in deep snows, I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards, (to my no small delight and admiration,) draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance.+

The blue titmouse, or nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a general devourer. Besides insects, it is very fond of

have seen these birds feeding along with domestic poultry, during snow storms, and even in frosty weather; on which occasions they become very tame.-ED.

* We have never heard of this beautiful little bird approaching the habitations of man during storms, although its congeners are as familiar as the robin during a nard winter, and will feed on bread, or other farinaceous diet. In the severe spring of 1824, great numbers, of various species, visited our grounds, and remained close to the house during the time the snow lay, mixing and feeding with the poultry. We have more than once seen a little hero of a blue titmouse disputing the right of a hen to feed from the same dish with him. In Loudon's Magazine, a correspondent says that this species destroys bees, "which it effects by rapping with its bill at the entrance of the hive, and killing the insects as they come out. I was informed that a whole hive was in this manner quickly destroyed."-ED.

Mr Gavin Inglis, of Strathendry Bleachfield, near Leslie, Fife, informed us, that he saw sparrows similarly employed on the thatch of one of his stacks; and that, finding their efforts ineffectual when exerted singly, they accomplished their end by uniting their strength, several of them hung to one straw, and thus pulled it out. -ED.

M