NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 263 
| Sel | ip ce al a Oe 
TO THE SAME. 
A RARE, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, 
which I have great reason to think is the pettichaps: it is common 
in some parts of the kingdom; and I have received formerly 
several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much resembles 
the white-throat, but has a more white or rather silvery breast and 
belly ; is restless and active, like the willow-wrens, and hops from 
bough to bough, examining every part for food ; it also runs up the 
stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells 
of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of 
each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge- 
sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots and mown walks. 
One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs 
me that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before 
eight o’clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of house- 
swallows, thirty, at least, he supposes, perching on a willow that 
hung over the verge of James Knight’s upper-pond. His attention 
was first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat motion- 
less in a row on the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by 
their weight, pressing down the twig so that it nearly touched the 
water. In this situation he watched them till he could see no 
longer. Repeated accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us 
greatly to suspect that house-swallows have some strong attach- 
ment to water, independent of the matter of food; and, though 
they may not retire into that element, yet they may conceal them- 
selves in the banks of pools and rivers during the uncomfortable 
months of winter. 
One of the keepers of Woolmer Forest sent me a peregrine- 
falcon, which he shot on the verge of that district as it was 
devouring a wood-pigeon. The falco peregrinus, or haggard-falcon, 
is a noble species of hawk seldom seen in the southern counties. 
{In winter 1767, one was killed in the neighbouring parish of 
