2o8 The Natural History of Selborne 



become a mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but 

 with feathers standing on end, wings hovering, and clucking note, 

 she runs about like one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in 

 the way of the greatest danger in order to avert it from their 

 progeny. Thus a partridge will tumble along before a sportsman 

 in order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In the 

 time of nidification the most feeble birds will assault the most 

 rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the 

 sight of an hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that 

 district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of 

 ravens nesting in the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or 

 eagle to rest near the station, but would drive them from the hill with 

 an amazing fury ; even the blue thrush at the season of breeding 

 would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the 

 kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird 

 that has young, she will not be induced to betray them by an inad- 

 vertent fondness, but will wait about at a distance with meat in her 

 mouth for an hour together. 



Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above by some 

 anecdotes which I probably may have mentioned before in conver- 

 sation, yet you will, I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake of 

 the illustration. 



The flycatcher of the "Zoology" (the Stoparola of Ray), builds 

 every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A 

 pair of these little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest 

 on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the 

 inconvenience that followed. But an hot sunny season coming on 

 before the brood was half-fledged, the reflection of the wall became 

 insupportable, and must inevitably have destroyed the tender young, 

 had not affection suggested an expedient, and prompted the parent- 

 birds to hover over the nest all the hotter hours, while with wings 

 expanded, and mouths gaping for breath, they screened off the heat 

 from their suffering offspring. 



A farther instance I once saw of notable sagacity in a willow-wren, 

 which had built in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend and 

 myself had observed as she sat in her nest ; but were particularly 



