The Natural History of Selborne

Young broods of swallows come out.  Cut 171 cucumbers; in all 424 this week.  Sweet moon light!

Gathered in the white apples, a very fine crop of large fine fruit, consisting of many bushels.

Cut 125 cucumbers.  Young martins, several hundreds, congregate on the tower, church, & yew-tree.  Hence I conclude that most of the second broods are flown.  Such an assemblage is very beautiful, & amusing, did it not bring with it the association of ideas tending to make us reflect that winter is approaching; & that these little birds are consulting how they may avoid it.

Tyed-up about 30 endives.  A swift still hovers about the brew-house at Fyfield.  About a week ago, one young swift, not half-fledged, was found, under the eaves of that building!  The dam no doubt is detained to this very late period by her attendance on this late-hatched, callow young!  The roof of my nephew’s brew-house abounds with swifts all the summer.

Cut 107 cucumbers. Nectarines  are finely flavoured, but eaten by bees, & wasps.  Churn-owl is seen over the village: fly-catchers seem to be gone.

Bad weather for the hops, & pickers.  When the boys bring me wasps nests, my Bantam fowls fare deliciously; & when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the young wasps intheir maggot-state with the highest glee, and delight.  Any inscet-eating bird would do the same: & therefore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr Ray should call one species of buzzard Buteo apivorus, sive vespivorus, or the Honey-buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be found in one fo their nests.  The combs were conveyed thither doubtless for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, & not for their honey;  since none is to be found in the combs of wasps.  Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects: thus have I seen a tame kite picking up the female ants, full of eggs, with much satisfaction.

Cut 62 cucumbers.  Holt White left us, & went to Newton.