NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 175 
ee 
es ce SS 
Eye a Oe OST, 
TO THE SAME, 
SELBORNE, Sept. 28¢h, 1774. 
DEAR SIR,—As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the 
British Azrundines, so it is undoubtedly the latest comer. For I 
remember but one instance of its appearing before the last week in 
April ; and in some of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been 
seen till the beginning of May. This species usually arrives in 
pairs. 
The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture, 
making no crust, or shell, for its nest ; but forming it of dry grasses 
and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. With all 
my attention to these birds, I have never been able once to discover 
one in the act of collecting or carrying in materials ; so that I have 
suspected (since their nests are exactly the same) that they some- 
times usurp upon the house-sparrows, and expel them, as sparrows 
do the house and sand-martin ; well remembering that I have seen 
them squabbling together at the entrance of their holes, and the 
sparrows up in arms, and much disconcerted at these intruders. 
And yet I am assured, bya nice observer in such matters, that they 
do collect feathers for their nests in Andalusia, and that he has shot 
them with such materials in their mouths.* 
Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification 
quite in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, 
and upon the tops of the walls of churches under the roof; and 
therefore cannot be so narrowly watched as those species that build 
more openly ; but, from what I could ever observe, they begin nest- 
ing about the middle of May ;and J have remarked, from eggs taken, 
that they have sat hard by the ninthof June. Ingeneral they haunt 
* The swift collects materials for its nest same as the swallows ; it is, however, a very 
simple structure, and the opening to it is often so narrow that it is an exertion for the 
parent bird to get in. White, towards the conclusion of this letter, seems to be aware of 
only another swift the white-bellied ; but there are many now known, and as proposed in the 
same paragraph we allude to, the first upon p. 180, the genus Cypselus has been formed, 
and is universally recognised for them. The description of the swift in this letter is 
altogether excellent, and alone would have shown Mr. White to have been a most close 
and accurate observer. The white-bellied swift has been taken in Great Britain. 
