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, over-run with hippoboscae, 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 fifth 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 storge (in Greek) 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 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 elikia (in Greek) or state of perfection; while the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious!
I am, etc.
Letter XXII
To The Honourable Daines BarringtonSelborne, Sept. 13, 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 consideraable depth in the chimney, was somewhat interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes might undergo the same fate with those of Tobit.*(* Tobit ii. 10.)
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-martin on April the 12th, and the house-martin 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-martins not till the middle of May. At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th, swallows April the 29th, house-martins May the 1st.
Do these different dates, in such distant districts, prove anything 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.
Linnaeus says that hawks 'paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat' but it appears to me that, during 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 Welch 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 & focis; but numbers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive.
In the season of notification 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 disqualify me for a naturalist; for, when those fits are upon me, Ilose 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, etc., 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 XXIII
To The Honourable Daines BarringtonSelborne, June 8, 1775.
