216 SWIFT?. 



LETTER LXXXI. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBOKNE, May 13, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, Among the many singularities attending those 

 amusing birds, the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion 

 that we have every year the same number of pairs invariably ; 

 at least the result of my inquiry has been exactly the same for 

 a long time past. The swallows and martens are so numerous, 

 and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly 

 possible to recount them ; while the swifts, though they do not 

 all build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and 

 rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The 

 number that I constantly find are eight pairs, about half of 

 which reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the 

 lowest and meanest thatched cottages. * Now, as these eight 

 pairs allowance being made for accidents breed yearly 

 eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase ? and 

 what determines, every spring, which pairs shall visit us, and 

 re-occupy their ancient haunts ? 



Ever since T have attended to the subject of ornithology, I 

 have always supposed that the sudden reverse of affection, that 

 strange avr/rfrog^Tj, which immediately succeeds in the feathered 

 kind to the most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal 

 dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. Without this 

 provision, one favourite district would be crowded with inha- 

 bitants, while others would be destitute and forsaken. But the 

 parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and to 

 oblige the young to seek for new abodes ; and the rivalry of 

 the males in many kinds prevents their crowding the one on 

 the other. Whether the swallows and house-martens return 

 in the same exact number annually it is not easy to say, for 

 reasons given above; but it is apparent, as I have remarked 

 before in my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear 

 no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring. 



* We do not mean to dispute the accuracy of the fact here mentioned ; 

 but we have seen many instances where the number of nests were trebled, 

 (luring three or four years, in one locality. ED. 



