48 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XXI. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Nov. 28, 1768. 



DEAR SIR, 



WITH regard to the oedicnemus, or stone-curlew, I intend to write 

 very soon to my friend near Chickester, 1 in whose neighbourhood 

 these birds seem most to abound ; and shall urge him to take 

 particular notice when they begin to congregate, and afterwards 

 to watch them most narrowly whether they do not withdraw 

 themselves during the dead of the winter. When I have obtained 

 information with respect to this circumstance, I shall have finished 

 my history of the stone-curlew ; which I hope will prove to your 

 satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near the truth. This 

 gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and is abroad 

 early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of 

 these birds : and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the 

 Naturalist's Journal 2 (with which he is much delighted), I shall 

 expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extra- 

 ordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us should 

 never straggle to you. 



And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think 

 of it, an anecdote which the above-mentioned gentleman told me 

 when I was last at his house ; which was that, in a warren joining 

 to his outlet, many daws (corvi monedtilce) build every year in the 

 rabbit-burrows under ground. The way he and his brothers used 

 to take their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the 

 mouths of the holes ; and, if they heard the young ones cry, they 

 twisted the nest out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls (viz. 

 the puffins) breed, I know, in that manner ; but I should never 

 have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat ground. 



Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place 

 to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their 

 nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost 

 stones of that amazing work of antiquity : which circumstance 



1 [This was his brother-in-law's brother, John Woods, of Chilgrove, about six 

 miles from Chichester.] 



z [TAe Naturalist's Journal, printed for W. Sandby, Fleet Street, London, 

 1767. Price one shilling and sixpence. This was drawn up on the plan recom- 

 mended by Daines Harrington. A copy was sent every year to Gilbert White, and 

 these diaries, filled up by him, are now preserved in the British Museum.] 



