OF SELBORNE 35 



the rubbish ; but, on my questioning him whether he saw 

 any of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment, 

 he answered me in the negative ; but that others assured 

 him they did. 



Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on 

 July the eleventh, and young martins (hirundines urbicse) 

 were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed 

 again once. For I see by my Fauna of last year, that 

 young broods come forth so late as September the eigh- 

 teenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of 

 hiding than migration ? Nay, some young martins 

 remained in their nests last year so late as September the 

 twenty-ninth ; and yet they totally disappeared with us 

 by the fifth of October. 



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 1 

 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 

 continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of 

 tall woods. 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 ol 

 this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and 

 that is, that 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 

 returning 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 



