NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 25 
| O 
Bree eRe ob 
TO THE SAME, 
SELBORNE, Set. oth, 1781. 
I HAVE just met with a circumstance respecting swifts, which 
furnishes an exception to the whole tenor of my observations ever 
since I have bestowed any attention on that species of hirundines. 
Our swifts, in general, withdrew this year about the first day of 
August, all save one pair, which in two or three days was reduced 
to a single bird. The perseverance of this individual made me 
suspect that the strongest of motives, that of an attachment to her 
young, could alone occasion so late a stay. I watched therefore 
tillthe 24th of August, and then discovered that, under the eaves 
of the church, she attended upon two young, which were fledged, 
and now put out their white chins from a crevice. These re- 
mained till the twenty-seventh, looking more alert every day, and 
seeming to long to be on the wing. After this day they were 
missing at once; nor could I ever observe them with their dam 
coursing round the church in the act of learning to fly, as the first 
broods evidently do. On the thirty-first I caused the eaves to be 
searched, but we found in the nest only two callow, dead, stinking 
swifts, on which a second nest had been formed. This double 
nest was full of the black shining cases of the Aippobosce 
hirundints. 
The following remarks on this unusual incident are obvious. The 
first is, that though it may be disagreeable to swifts to remain 
beyond the beginning of August, yet that they can subsist longer 
is undeniable. The second is, that this uncommon event, as it was 
owing to the loss of the first brood, so it corroborates my former 
remark, that swifts breed regularly but once ; since, was the con- 
trary the case, the occurrence above could neither be new nor 
rare. 
P.S. One swift was seen at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, in 
1782, so late as the third of September. 
