ee eee ee 
——s oe oe “ 
* 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. sik > 
to get him one when they call on us again in April. I am 
glad that you and that gentleman saw my Andalusian birds; 
I hope they answered your expectation. Royston, or grey, 
crows are winter birds that come much about the same time 
with the woodcock ; they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have 
no apparent reason for migration; for as they fare in the 
winter like their congeners, so might they in all appearance in 
the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, mistaken? Did 
he not find a missel-thrush’s nest, and take it for the nest of a 
fieldfare ? | 
The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon, is the last winter bird of 
passage which appears with us ; it is not seen till towards the 
end of November: about twenty years ago they abounded in 
the district of Selborne, and strings of them were seen morn- 
ing and evening that reached a mile or more; but since the 
beechen woods have been greatly thinned they are much 
decreased in number. ‘The ring-dove stays with us the whole 
year, and breeds several times through the summer. 
Before I received your letter of October last I had just 
remarked in my journal that the trees were unusually green. 
This uncommon verdure lasted on late into November, and 
may be accounted for from a late spring, a cool and moist 
summer ; but more particularly from vast armies of chafers, or 
tree-beetles, which, in many places, reduced whole woods to a 
leafless naked state. ‘These trees shot again at midsummer, 
and then retained their foliage till very late in the year. 
My musical friend, at whose house I am now visiting, has 
tried all the owls that are his near neighbors with a pitch-pipe 
set at concert pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will 
examine the nightingales next spring. 
