SWALLOWS, 185 



rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are 

 going to roost in deep woods : at the dawn of day, 

 they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded 

 a few minutes by a flight of daws, that act, as it were, 

 as their harbingers. 



LETTER LVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, January 29, 1774. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THE house-swallow, or chimney- swallow, is, un- 

 doubtedly, the first comer of all the British hirundineS 

 and appears in general on or about the 13th of April, 

 as I have remarked from many years' observation. 

 Not but now and then a straggler is seen much ear- 

 lier : and, in particular, when I was a boy, I observed 

 a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm 

 Shrove Tuesday : which day could not fall out later 

 than the middle of March, and often happened early 

 in February. 



It is worth remarking, that these birds are seen 

 first about lakes and mill-ponds ; and it is also very 

 particular, that, if these early visitors happen to find 

 frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful 

 springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately with- 

 draw for a time ; a circumstance this, much more 

 in favour of hiding than migration ; since it is much 

 more probable that a bird should retire to its hyber- 

 naculum just at hand, than return for a week or two 

 only to warmer latitudes. 



The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, 

 by no means builds altogether in chimneys, but often 



