The Natural History of Selborne

Fresh ling.  Hollibut.  Inyx.

Some mackrels.

Dutch plaice abound. Turbots.

Herrings abound, & are the usual forerunners of mackerels.

Hirundo apus!!!  Blackcap has a most sweet and mellow note.  The redstarts frequent orchards & gardens: the white throats are scattered all over the fields far from neighbourhoods.  Their notes are mean & much a like; short & without much variety.  The whitethroat is a most common bird.  Young thrushes.  The large species of bats appears.  Nightingales abound.

Regulus on cristatus voce stridula locustae.  This is the largest of the three willow wrens: it haunts the tops of tall trees making a shivering noise & shaking its wings.  It’s colours are more vivid than those of the other two species.

Oedicnemus sings late at night.

Regulus non cristatus medius.  The second-sized willow-wren has a plaintive, but pleasing note, widely different from that of the first which is harsh and sharp.  Merula torquata.  The ring-ouzels appear again on Noar-hill in their return to the northward: they make but a few days stay in their spring visit; but rest with us near a fortnight as they go to the Southward at Michaelmas.

Atricapilla.  The black-cap is usually the second bird of passage that appears.  Some snow under the hedges.

Anemone pulsatilla budds.  This plant, the pasque flower, which is just emerging and budding for bloom, abounds on the sheep-down just above Streatley in Berks.