102 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
fore our beechen woods were so much destroyed, we had myriads 
of them, reaching in strings for a mile together as they went out 
in a morning to feed. They leave us early in spring ; where do 
they breed ?* 
The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird the 
storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring in blowing 
showery weather ; its song often commences with the year : with 
us it builds much in orchards. 
A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring-ousels 
on Dartmoor : they build in banks on the sides of streams.f 
Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as 
they play and toy about on the wing ; and particularly while 
they are descending, and sometimes as they stand on the ground.^ 
Adanson's testimony seems to me to be a very poor evidence 
that European swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal : 
he does not talk at all like an ornithologist ; and probably saw 
only the swallows of that country, which I know build within 
Governor O^Hara^s wall against the roof. Had he known Euro- 
pean swallows, would he not have mentioned the species ? 
The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it 
flies : this species appears commonly about a week before the 
house-martin, and about ten or twelve days before the swift. 
In 1772 there were young house-martins in their nest till Oc- 
tober the twenty-third. § 
The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the 
house-swallow : viz. about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth of 
April. 
Whin-chats and stone-chatters stay with us the whole year.|| 
* A few breed in Surrey, generally in the holes of trees, being thus mediate in their nidification 
between the cushat and rock-pigeons, though, according to Selby, some construct a nest like the 
cushat-pigeon. It is in summer rather a rare species in the south of England, and has rather a 
disagreeable grunting note, very different from the musical coo of the cushat, and equally unlike 
that of the rock or dove-cot species, of which it is not the wild stock, as some have supposed. — Ed. 
t Generally in steep places, where the nest is supported by a stunted bush, or projecting clump 
of heather. — Ed. 
t The tree pipit {anthus urboreus) is here spoken of, which is the "titlark" of the bird shops, 
though in books on natural history this term has been erroneously applied to another species, the 
common pipit {anthus communis), or " meadow pipit" of recent authors, which is equally a bird 
of the mountain, the moor, and the marsh. — Ed. 
§ The migrative impulse is so powerful in the swallow tribes (including the swift), that the 
later unfledged young are not unfrequently deserted, and left to starve. — Ed. 
II This is a mistake. Mr. White may have observed a solitary individual or so of the migrant 
furze-chat, or " whin-chat" (saxicoio-rwfcefra mifraforio), during the winter, but such an occur- 
rence is a very rare exception to the general rule. Of the black-headed furze-chat, or " stone- 
chatter" {S.-r--rubicola), a considerable number always remain with us, but the majority mi- 
grate ; and although this has been disputed by some, who try to reason on the subject, I know 
it to be the fact, from their frequently settling on the rigging of vessels passing the Channel. Be- 
