OF SELBORNE 207 



not till the l6th of April y and then only a pair. Martins in 

 general were remarkably late this year. 



LETTER LII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Sept. 9, 1781. 



I HAVE just met with a circumstance respecting swifts, which 

 furnishes an exception to the whole tenor of my observations 

 ever since I have bestowed any attention on that species of 

 hirundines. Our swifts, in general, withdrew this year about 

 the first day of August, all save one pair, which in two or three 

 days was reduced to a single bird. The perseverance of this 

 individual made me suspect that the strongest of motives, that 

 of an attachment to her young, could alone occasion so late a stay. 

 I watched therefore till the twenty-fourth of August, and then 

 discovered that, under the eaves of the church, she attended upon 

 two young, which were fledged, and now put out their white 

 chins from a crevice. These remained till the twenty-seventh, 

 looking more alert every day, and seeming to long to be on the 

 wing. After this day they were missing at once ; nor could I 

 ever observe them with their dam coursing round the church in 

 the act of learning to fly, as the first broods evidently do. On 

 the thirty-first I caused the eaves to be searched, but we found 

 in the nest only two callow, dead, stinking swifts, on which a 

 second nest had been formed. This double nest was full of the 

 black shining cases of the hippoboscce hirundinis. 



The following remarks on this unusual incident are obvious. 

 The first is, that though it may be disagreeable to swifts to 

 remain beyond the beginning of August, yet that they can subsist 

 longer is undeniable. 1 The second is, that this uncommon event, 

 as it was owing to the loss of the first brood, so it corroborates 

 my former remark, that swifts breed regularly but once ; since, 

 was the contrary the case, the occurrence above could neither be 

 new nor rare. 



P.S. One swift was seen at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, 

 in 1782, so late as the third of September. 



1 [It was a mere accident that White had seen no swifts later than the first week 

 in August. They may be seen now and then all through August, and even in 

 September, especially in the south.] 



