102 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



fore our beechen woods were so much destroyed, we had myriads 

 of them, reaching in strings for a mile together as they went out 

 in a morning to feed. They leave us early in spring ; where do 

 they breed ?* 



The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird the 

 storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring in blowing 

 showery weather ; its song often commences with the year : with 

 us it builds much in orchards. 



A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring-ousels 

 on Dartmoor : they build in banks on the sides of streams.f 



Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as 

 they play and toy about on the wing ; and particularly while 

 they are descending, and sometimes as they stand on the ground. J 



Adanson's testimony seems to me to be a very poor evidence 

 that European swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal : 

 he does not talk at all like an ornithologist ; and probably saw 

 only the swallows of that country, which I know build within 

 Governor O'Hara's wall against the roof. Had he known Euro- 

 pean swallows, would he not have mentioned the species ? 



The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it 

 flies : this species appears commonly about a week before the 

 house-martin, and about ten or twelve days before the swift. 



In 1772 there were young house-martins in their nest till Oc- 

 tober the twenty-third. 



The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the 

 house-swallow : viz. about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth of 

 April. 



Whin-chats and stone-chatters stay with us the whole year.|| 



* A few breed in Surrey, generally in the holes of trees, being thus mediate in their nidification 

 between the cushat and rock-pigeons, though, according to Selby, some construct a nest like the 

 cushat-pigeon. It is in summer rather a rare species in the south of England, and has rather a 

 disagreeable grunting note, very different from the musical coo of the cushat, and equally unlike 

 that of the rock or dove-cot species, of which it is not the wild stock, as some have supposed. ED . 



t Generally in steep places, where the nest is supported by a stunted bush, or projecting clump 

 of heather. ED. 



J The tree pipit (anthus arboreus) is here spoken of, which is the " titlark*' of the bird shops, 

 though in books on natural history this term has been erroneously applied to another species, the 

 common pipit (antfais cowmumis), or " meadow pipit" of recent authors, which is equally a bird 

 of the mountain, the moor, and the marsh. ED. 



The migrative impulse is so powerful in the swallow tribes (including the swift), that the 

 later unfledged young are not unfrequently deserted, and left to starve. E. 



|| This is a mistake. Mr. White may have observed a solitary individual or so of the migrant 

 furze-chat, or "whin-chat" (saxicola-rubetra migratorid) , during the winter, but such an occur- 

 rence is a very rare exception to the general rule. Of the black-headed furze-chat, or " stone- 

 chatter" (S.-r--rubicold), a considerable number always remain with us, but the majority mi- 

 grate ; and although this has been disputed by some, who try to reason on the subject, I know 

 it to be the fact, from their frequently settling on the rigging of vessels passing the Channel. Be- 



