130 
NATURAL HISTORY OE SELBOR^^E. 
colour. Near Yalencia, in Spain, they are taken, says Willugliby, and 
sold in the markets for the table ; and are called by the country people, 
probably from their desultory jerking manner of flight, Fapilion de 
Montagna. 
. . LETTEE XXL 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, Sept. 28th, 1774. 
Dear Sir. — A s the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British 
hirimdines, so it is undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember but 
one instance of its appearing before the last week in April ; and in 
some of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till the 
beginning of May. This species usually arrives in pairs. 
The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture, 
making no crust, or shell, for its nest ; but forming it of dry grasses 
and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. With all my 
attention to these birds, I have never been able once to discover one 
in the act of collecting or carrying in materials ; so that I have suspected 
(since their nests are exactly tlie same) that they sometimes usurp upon 
the house-sparrows, and expel them, as sparrows do the house and 
sand-martin; well remembering that I have seen them squabbling 
together at the entrance of their holes, and the sparrows up in arms, 
and much disconcerted at these intruders. And yet I am assured, 
by a nice observer in such matters, that they do collect feathers for 
their nests in Andalusia, and that he has shot them with such materials 
in their mouths."^^ 
Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification quite 
in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, and upon 
the tops of the walls of churches under the roof ; and therefore cannot 
be so narrowly watched as those species that build more openly ; but, 
from what I could ever observe, they begin nesting about the middle of 
May ; and I have remarked, from eggs taken, that they have sat hard 
by the ninth of June. In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, 
and steeples, and breed only in such ; yet in this village some pairs 
frequent the lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young 
under those thatched roofs. We remember but one instance where they 
breed out of buildings, and that is in the sides of a deep chalk-pit 
near the town of Odiham, in this county, where we have seen many 
pairs entering the crevices, and skimming and squeaking round the 
precipices. 
* The swift collects materials for its nest same as the swallows ; it is, however, 
a very simple structure, and the opening to it is often so narrow that it is an 
exertion for the parent bird to get in. White, towards the conclusion of this 
letter, seems to be aware of only another swift — the white-beUied ; but there 
are many now known, and as proposed in the same paragraph we allude to, 
the last upon p. 133, the genus Cypselus has been formed, and is universally 
recognised for them. The description of the swift in this letter is altogether 
excellent, and alone would have shown Mr. White to have been a most close and 
accurate observer. The white-beUied swift has been taken in Great Britain. 
