NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 37 



How strange is it that the swift, which seems to live 

 exactly the same life with the swallow and house-martin, 

 should leave us before the middle of August invariably ! 

 while the latter stay often till the middle of October; and 

 once I saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of 

 November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying 

 in sight together ; an uncommon assemblage of summer 

 and winter-birds ! 



A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda 

 trivialis, or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still con- 

 tinues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of 

 tall woods. 1 The stoparola of Ray (for which we have as 

 yet no name in these parts) is called, in your Zoology, the 

 fly-catcher? There is one circumstance characteristic of 

 this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and 

 that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, 

 from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in 

 the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but return- 

 ing still to the same stand for many times together. 



I perceive there are more than one species of the 

 motacilla trochilus: Mr. Derham supposes, in Ray's Philos. 

 Letters, that he has discovered three. In these there is 

 again an instance of some very common birds that have 

 as yet no English name. 3 



Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black- 

 cap (motacilla atricapilla} be a bird of passage or not : I 

 think there is no doubt of it : for, in April, in the first fine 

 weather, they come trooping, all at once, into these parts, 



doubt. In the British Museum there is a specimen obtained near Brighton on 

 the 22nd of November 1883, apparently a belated young bird. Yarrell con- 

 tributed a note to Bennett's edition, that upwards of a. hundred Martins were seen 

 collected on the I3th of November at Dover. Professor Bell mentions an instance 

 of Martins being seen on the 22nd of November 1873 by Mr. Montague Knight of 

 Chawton House, about four miles from Selborne (Bell's ed., p. 28 note). See also 

 Letter XXI (p. 91), where Gilbert White records a Martin as having been seen 

 in a sheltered hollow on the 26th of November, and adds, "I am now perfectly 

 satisfied that they do not all leave this island in the winter." [R. B. S.] 



1 This was probably the Wood-warbler (Phylloscopus sibilator), more fully 

 discussed by the author in subsequent letters (see pp. 79-82). [R. B. S.] 



2 Muscicapa grisola. [R. B. S.] 3 See Letter XIX (fostea, p. 79). {R. B. S.] 



