64 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not for- 

 sake them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this 

 neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven 

 from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more 

 reasonable ; and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace 

 from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very 

 short a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the two species of 

 herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your 

 description of the heronry at Cressi Hall ; which is a curiosity I 

 never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one 

 tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight 

 of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, 

 and near what town it lies.* I have often thought that those vast 

 extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If half a 

 dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water-spaniels, 

 were to beat them over a week, they would certainly find more 

 species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more 

 than that of the caprimulgns (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful 

 and curious creature ; but I have always found that though some- 

 times it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it 

 utters its jarring note sitting on a bough ; and I have for many an 

 half-hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and 

 particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its 

 head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your 

 draughtsman in the folio " British Zoology." This bird is most 

 punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; so 

 exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or twice just 

 at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear 

 when the weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt that its 

 notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of 

 its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats purr. You will credit me, 

 I hope, when I assure you that, as my neighbours were assembled 

 in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one 

 of these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw 

 edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note for many 

 minutes ; and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs 

 of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible vibration 

 to the whole building ! This bird also sometimes makes a small 



* Cressi Hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire, 



