OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER CI. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BAREINGTON. 
A UAEE, and I tliink a new, little bird frequents my garden, 
which I have great reason to tliink is the pettichaps •} it is 
common in some parts of the kingdom ; and I have received 
formerly several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird 
much resembles the white-throat, but has a more white or silvery 
breast and belly ; is restless and active, like the willow-wrens, 
and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food ; 
it also runs np the stems of the crown-imperials, and putting its 
head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands 
in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground, 
like the hedge-sparrow, hopping about on the grass-plots and 
mown walks. 
One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, in- 
forms me, that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes 
before eight o'clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster 
of house-swallows, thirty at least, he supposes, perching on a 
willow that hung over James Knight's upper-pond. His atten- 
tion was first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat 
motionless in a row on the bough, with their heads all one way, 
and, by their weight, pressing down the twig so that it nearly 
touched the water. In this situation he watched them till he 
could see no longer. Eepeated accounts of this sort, in spring 
and fall, induce me greatly to suspect that house-swallows have 
some strong attachment to water, independent of the matter of 
food ; and, though they may not retire into that element, yet 
they may conceal themselves in the banks of pools and rivers 
during the uncomfortable months of winter. 
^ Lesser white-throat {Sylvia curruca, Temm.), and not the pettichaps ; 
the song is very sweet, and more perfect in its notes than that of the white- 
throat : it is shy, wary, and even petulant in avoiding intruders. 
