Volume I Part 9 (1/2)

When you say that in breeding-time the c.o.c.k snipes make a bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should rather have said a humming), I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are playing about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with their mouths: but whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say; but this I know, that when this noise happens, the bird is always descending, and his wings are violently agitated.

Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, and, leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep-walks.

Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, where there is a great lake: it was kept awhile, but died.

I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild ducks.

Speaking of the swift, that page says ”its drink the dew;” whereas it should be ”it drinks on the wing;” for all the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like Virgil's bees, they drink flying; ”_flumina summa libant_.” In this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar.

Of the sedge-bird, be pleased to say it sings most part of the night; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing; or, in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it rea.s.sumes its song.

LETTER XL.

SELBORNE, _Sept. 2nd_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared; so that there was no danger of confounding the dams with their _pulli_: and besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the s.e.xes, nor the individuals of different chimneys the one for the other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each s.e.x has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked shape; with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of the male than in that of the female.

Nightingales, when their young first come abroad and are helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise, and also a snapping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they walk; these last sounds seem intended for menace and defiance.

The gra.s.shopper-lark chirps all night in the height of summer.

Swans turn white the second year, and breed the third.

Weasels prey on moles, as appears by their being sometimes caught in mole-traps.

Sparrow-hawks sometimes breed in old crows' nests, and the kestril in churches and ruins.

There are supposed to be two sorts of eels in the island of Ely. The threads sometimes discovered in eels are perhaps their young: the generation of eels is very dark and mysterious.

Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and seem never to settle on trees.

When redstarts shake their tails they move them horizontally, as dogs do when they fawn: the tail of a wagtail, when in motion, bobs up and down like that of a jaded horse.

Hedge-sparrows have a remarkable flirt with their wings in breeding-time; as soon as frosty mornings come they make a very piping, plaintive noise.

Many birds, which become silent about Midsummer, rea.s.sume their notes again in September, as the thrush, blackbird, woodlark, willow-wren, etc.; hence August is by much the most mute month, the spring, summer, and autumn through. Are birds induced to sing again because the temperament of autumn resembles that of spring?

Linnaeus ranges plants geographically; palms inhabit the tropics, gra.s.ses the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the polar circles; no doubt animals may be cla.s.sed in the same manner with propriety.

House-sparrows build under eaves in the spring; as the weather becomes hotter, they get out for coolness, and nest in plum-trees and apple-trees. These birds have been known sometimes to build in rooks'

nests, and sometimes in the forks of boughs under rooks' nests.

As my neighbour was housing a rick, he observed that his dogs devoured all the little red mice that they could catch, but rejected the common mice; and that his cats ate the common mice, refusing the red.

Redb.r.e.a.s.t.s sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn. The reason that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus; in the latter their song becomes distinguishable. Many songsters of the autumn seem to be the young c.o.c.k redb.r.e.a.s.t.s of that year: nothwithstanding the prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the summer fruits.