OF SELBORNE. 1M 



gages in song in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but in- 

 ward melody, and expresses great variety of soft and gentle 

 modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, 

 the nightingale excepted. 



Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and gardens ; while they 

 warble their throats are wonderfully distended. 



The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like 

 that of the white-throat : some birds have a few more notes 

 than others. Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in 

 a village, the cock sings from morning to night : he affects 

 neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, and loves to build in 

 orchards and about houses ; with us he perches on the vane of 

 n tall maypole. 



The fly-catcher is of all our summer birds the most mute 

 and the most familiar ; it also appears the last of any. It 

 builds in a vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of an house, 

 or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and 

 often close to the post of a door where people are going in and 

 out all day long. This bird does not make the least preten- 

 sion to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it 

 thinks it's young in danger from cats or other annoyances: it 

 breeds but once, and retires early *. 



Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more 

 than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden ; the for- 

 mer has produced more than one hundred and twenty species, 

 the latter only two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add 



* [The lameness of the common flycatcher is one of the pleasant quali- 

 ties of this interesting little bird. A pair built and had their young in 

 the ivy on my house. Three young ones, nearly fledged, were blown out 

 of the nest, and were picked up unhurt and placed in a cage- with the 

 door open, and hung outside the kitchen window. They all sat at the 

 open door, and the parent birds immediately came to them, and supplied 

 them diligently with food all the day, without the least appearance of 

 fear. At night the cage was taken into the kitchen ; and in the morning 

 it was again hung out as on the day before, and the parents resumed their 

 care. This continued for a few days, until the young birds could fly ; and 

 then, instead of leaving the place at once, they all, parents and offspring, 

 continued to haunt the shrubs close to the scene of their artificial nursery. 

 I have known several instances confirmatory of Mr. Yarrell's supposition 

 that this bird returns to the same nesting-place year after year. My late 



