OF SELBORNE 137 



of five or six, and get the best fare they can within a 

 certain district, having no inducement to go in quest of 

 fresh-turned earth." Now if you mean that the business 

 of congregating is quite at an end from the conclusion of 

 wheat-sowing to tlie season of barley and oats, it is not 

 the case with us ; for larks and chaffinches, and particu- 

 larly linnets, ilock and congregate as much in the very 

 dead of winter as when the husbandman is busy with his 

 ploughs and harrows. 



Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and 

 fieldfares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the 

 seas, and to retire to some districts more suitable to the 

 purpose of breeding. That the former pair before they 

 retire, and that the hens are forward with egg, I myself, 

 when I was a sportsman, have often experienced. It 

 cannot indeed be denied but that now and then we hear 

 of a woodcock's nest, or young birds, discovered in some 

 part or other of this island ; but then they are always 

 mentioned as rarities, and somewhat out of the common 

 course of things : but as to redwings and fieldfares, no 

 sportsman or naturalist has ever yet, that I could hear, 

 pretended to have found the nest or young of those 

 species in any part of these kingdoms. And I the more 

 admire at this instance as extraordinary, since, to all 

 appearance, the same food in summer as well as in 

 winter might support them here which maintains their 

 congeners, the blackbirds and thrushes, did they choose 

 to stay the summer through. From hence it appears 

 that it is not food alone which determines some species 

 of birds with regard to their stay or departure. Field- 

 fares and redwings disappear sooner or later according as 

 the warm weather comes on earlier or later. For I well 

 remember, after that dreadful winter of 1739-40, that 

 cold north-east winds continued to blow on through 

 April and May, and that these kinds of birds (what few 



55— E* 



