TEALS. ^WHITE OWLS. 157 



LETTER LIII. 



TO THE SAME. ■ 



Selborne, July 8, 1773. 

 Deae Sie, — Some young men went down lately to a pond 

 on the verge of "WoLmer Forest to hunt flappers, or young 

 wild ducks, many of whicli they caught, and, among the rest, 

 some very minute yet well-fledged wild fowls alive, which,, 

 upon examination, I found to be teals. I did not know tUl 

 then that teals ever bred in the south of England, and was 

 much pleased with the discovery : this I look upon as a 

 great stroke in natural history.- 



"We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white 

 owls that constantly breed under the eaves of this church. 

 As I have paid good attention to the manner of life of these 

 birds during their season of breeding, which lasts the summer 

 through, the following remarks may not perhaps be unac- 

 ceptable. About an hovir before sunset (for then the mice 

 begin to run) they sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all 

 round the hedges of meadows and small inclosures for them, 

 which seem to be their only food. In this irregular country 

 we can stand on an eminence, and see them beat the fields 

 over like a setting-dog, and often drop down in the grass or 

 corn. I have minuted these birds with my watch for an 

 hour together, and have found that they return to their nest, 

 the one or the other of them, about once in five minutes ;* 

 reflecting, at the same time, on the adroitness that every 

 animal is possessed of, as far as regards the well-being of 

 itself and offspring. But a piece of address which they show 

 when they return loaded, should not, I think be passed over 



* Colonel Montagu has observed (see Ornithological Diet., p. 35), that 

 the wren returns once in two minutes, or, upon an average, thirty-six times in 

 an hour ; and this continued full sixteen hours in a. day, which, if equally 

 divided between eight young ones, each would receive seventy-two feeds in the 

 day. To this may be added, that the swallow never fails to returu to its nest 

 at the expiration of every second or third minute, — Rev. J. Mitford. 



