NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 8/ 



into gardens and orchards, and make great havoc among the 

 summer-fruits. 



The blackcap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, and 

 wild pipe; yet that strain is of short continuance, and his 

 motions are desultory ; but when that bird sits calmly and en- 

 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. 



Blackcaps 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 whitethroat ; 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 

 neighborhoods, and avoids solitude, and loves to build in or- 

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

 a 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 sweetbrier, against the wall of a 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 pre- 

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

 thinks its 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 also 

 that it has shown near half the species that were ever known 

 in Great Britain. 



On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with 

 it a quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious ; but 

 when I recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I 

 hope you will pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the 

 information it may happen to contain. 



