The Natural History of Selborne

Swifts are very gay, & alert.  Tulips are gone off.  Chafers abound:  they are quite a pest this year at, & about Fyfield.

Honey-suckles begin to blow.  Columbines very fine.  Mr. Richardson has left us.

Mr Richardson came.

Much gossamer.  The air is full of floating cotton from the willows.  There are young lapwings in the forest.  Female wasps about: they rasp particles of wood from sound posts & rails, which being mixed-up with a glutinous matter form their nests.  Hornets collect beech-wood.

The prospect from my great parlor-windows to the hanger now beautiful: the apple-trees in bloom add to the richness of the scenery! the grass-hopper lark whispers in my hedges. That bird, the fern-owl, & the nightingale of an evening may be heard at the same time: & often the wood-lark, hovering & taking circuits round in the air at a vast distance from the ground.

While high in the air, & pois’d upon its wings,/
Unseen the soft, enamour’d wood-lark sings.

Slipped-out the artichokes, & earthed them up.  Mrs Yalden left us.

Mrs Yalden came.  Many pairs of daws build in the church: but they have placed their nests so high up between the shingles, & the ceiling, that ye boys cannot come at them. These birds go forth to feed at 1/2 hours after four in the morning.

Dandelions are going out of bloom; & now the pastures look yellow with the Ranunculus bulbosus, butter cups.

Timothy Turner’s Bantham sow brings 20 pigs, some of which she trod-on, & overlaid; so that they were soon reduced to 13.  She has but 12 teats.  Before she farrowed her belly swept on the ground.

Timothy began to march about at 5 in the morning.