OF SELBORNR 171 



LETTER XXI. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774. 

 DEAR SIR, 



As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British hirun- 

 dinesj so is it undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember 

 but one instance of it's 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 archi- 

 tecture, making no crust, or shell, for it's 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 sometimes 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 intru- 

 ders. And yet I am assured, by a nice observer in such 

 matters, that they do collect feathers for their nests in Anda- 

 lusia ; and that ho has shot them with such materials in their 

 mouths *. 



Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidifi- 

 cation 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 



* [His brother, the Rev. John White, then chaplain at Gibraltar, 

 afterwards incumbent of Blackburn, Lancashire; for many years his 

 principal correspondent. T. B.] 



