OF SELBORNE 83 



On September the twenty-fourth three or four ring- 

 ousels appeared in my fields for the first time this season : 

 how punctual are these visitors in their autumnal and 

 spring migrations! 



LETTER XXXVIII 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



Selborne, March 15, 1773. 



DEAR SIR, 



BY my journal for last autumn it appears that the house- 

 martins bred very late, and staid very late in these parts ; 

 for, on the first of October, I saw young martins in their 

 nests nearly fledged ; and again, on the twenty-first 

 of October, we had at the next house a nest full of young 

 martins just ready to fly ; and the old ones were hawking 

 for insects with great alertness. The next morning the 

 brood forsook their nest, and were flying round the village. 

 From this day I never saw one of the swallow kind till 

 November the third; when twenty, or perhaps thirty, 

 house-martins were playing all day long by the side of the 

 hanging wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak 

 birds, some of which were nestlings twelve days ago, shift 

 their quarters at this late season of the year to the other 

 side of the northern tropic? Or rather, is it not more 

 probable that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep 

 covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more 

 northern naturalist would say), may become their hyber- 

 naculum, and afford them a ready and obvious retreat ? 



We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring- 

 ousels every week. Persons worthy of credit assure me 

 that ring-ousels were seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest 

 of Bere, on the southern verge of this county. Hence we 

 may conclude that their migrations are only internal, and 

 not extended to the continent southward, if they do at first 



