THE SWALLOW. l6l 



Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of 

 which seem to get their livelihood very easily ; for they spend 

 the greatest part of the day on their nest-trees when the weather 

 is mild. These rooks retire every evening all the winter from 

 this rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are going 

 to roost in deep woods : at the dawn of day they always revisit 

 their nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of 

 daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XVIII. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



DEAR SIR, Selborne, Jan. 29, 1774. 



THE house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first 

 comer of all the British hirundines ;* and appears in general on 

 or about the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked from many 

 years' observation. Not but now and then a straggler is seen 

 much earlier : and, in particular, when I was a boy I observed 

 a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove 

 Tuesday ; which day could not fall out later than the middle of 

 March, and often happened early in February. 



It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about 

 lakes and mill-ponds ; and it is also very particular, that if these 

 early visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of 

 the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately 

 withdraw for a time. A circumstance this much more in favour 

 of hiding than migration ; since it is much more probable that a 

 bird should retire to its hybernaculum just at hand than return 

 for a week or two only to warmer latitudes. 



The swallow, though called the chimney- swallow, by no means 

 builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out- 

 houses against the rafters ; and so she did in Virgil's time : 



" AntS 



Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo." 



In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the 

 barn-swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are 

 no chimneys to houses except they are English-built : in these 



* I think the bank-swallow usually precedes it, which species often arrives towards the latter 

 end of March. ED. 



