166 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 
LETTEE XLIIL 
TO THE SAME. 
Selbokne, Sept. 9fh, 1778. 
Deae Sir, — From tlie motion of birds^ the transition is natural 
enough to their notes and language, of which I shall say something. 
Not that I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier ; 
who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between two owls, 
1 reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and devastation; 
but I would be thought only to mean that many of the winged tribes 
have various sounds and voices adapted to express their various 
passions, wants, and feelings ; such as anger, fear, love, hatred, hunger, 
and the like. All species are not equally eloquent ; some are copious 
and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others are confined to a 
few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is quite mute, 
though some are rather silent.f The language of birds is very ancient, 
and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical ; little is said, 
but much is meant and understood. 
The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing ; and about the 
season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured by 
a curious observer of Nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where 
eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the 
king of birds. Owls have very expressive notes ; they hoot in a fine 
vocal sound, much resembling the vox liumana, and reducible by a 
pitch-pipe to a musical key. This note seems to express complacency 
and rivalry among the males ; they use also a quick call and an horrible 
scream ; and can snore and hiss when they mean to menace. Eavens, 
besides their loud croak, can exert a deep and solemn note that makes 
the woods to echo ; the amorous sound of a crow is strange and 
ridiculous ; rooks, in the breeding season, attempt sometimes in the 
gaiety of their hearts to sing, but with no great success ; the parrot- 
kind have many modulations of voice, as appears by their aptitude to 
learn human sounds ; doves coo in an amorous and mournful manner, 
and are emblems of despairing lovers ; the woodpecker sets up a sort 
of loud and hearty laugh ; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk 
till day -break, serenades his mate with the clattering of castanets. All 
- the tuneful passeres express their complacency by sweet modulations, 
and a variety of melody. The swallow, as has been observed in a 
former letter, by a shrill alarm bespeaks the attention of the other 
hirundines, and bids them be aware the hawk is at hand. Aquatic and 
gregarious birds, especially the nocturnal, that shift their quarters in 
the dark, are very noisy and loquacious ; as cranes, wild-geese, wild- 
See Spectator, Vol. vii.. No. 512 
t Fish are not all mute. Tlie grey gurnard, Trigla gurnardus, called crooner 
from its noise, may be seem in a calm day in large shoals rising and ploughing the 
surface of the sea with their noses, at which time they utter a grunting sound 
which may be heard at a distance of half a mile ; we have heard them called 
grvMters. Schomburck writes of the Pltractoctphalus of the Guiana rivers "that 
when hauled on shore they make a loud grunting noise.' 
