166 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 



LETTER XLIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Sept. Qtli, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, From the motion of birds, the transition is natural 

 enough to their notes and language, of which I shall say something. 

 Not that I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier ; 

 who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between two owls, 

 reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and devastation; 

 but I would be thought only to mean that many of the winged tribes 

 have various sounds and voices adapted to express their various 

 passions, wants, and feelings ; such as anger, fear, love, hatred, hunger, 

 and the like. All species are not equally eloquent ; some are copious 

 and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others are confined to a 

 few important sounds : no bird, like the fish kind, is quite mute, 

 though some are rather silent.f The language of birds is very ancient, 

 and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical ; little is said, 

 but much is meant and understood. 



The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing ; and about the 

 season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured by 

 a curious observer of Nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where 

 eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the 

 king of birds. Owls have very expressive notes ; they hoot in a fine 

 vocal sound, .much resembling the vox humana, and reducible by a 

 pitch-pipe to a musical key. This note seems to express complacency 

 and rivalry among the males ; they use also a quick call and an horrible 

 scream ; and can snore and hiss when they mean to menace. Havens, 

 besides their loud croak, can exert a deep and solemn note that makes 

 the woods to echo ; the amorous sound of a crow is strange and 

 ridiculous ; rooks, in the breeding season, attempt sometimes in the 

 gaiety of their hearts to sing, but with no great success ; the parrot- 

 kind have many modulations of voice, as appears by their aptitude to 

 learn human sounds ; doves coo in an amorous and mournful manner, 

 and are emblems of despairing lovers ; the woodpecker sets up a sort 

 of loud and hearty laugh ; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk 

 till day-break, serenades his mate with the clattering of castanets. All 

 the tuneful passeres express their complacency by sweet modulations, 

 and a variety of mslody. The swallow, as has been observed in a 

 former letter, by a shrill alarm bespeaks the attention of the other 

 hirundines, and bids them be aware the hawk is at hand. Aquatic and 

 gregarious birds, especially the nocturnal, that shift their quarters in 

 the dark, are very noisy and loquacious; as cranes, wild-geese, wild- 



* See Spectator, Vol. vii., No. 512 



t Fish are not all mute. The grey gurnard, Trigla gurnardus, called crooner 

 from its noise, may be seem in a calm day in large shoals rising and ploughing the 

 surface of the sea with their noses, at which time they utter a grunting sound 

 which may be heard at a distance of half a mile ; we have heard them called 

 grunters. Schomburck writes of the Phractoctphalus of the Guiana rivers "that 

 when hauled on shore they make a loud grunting noise.' 



