The Natural History of Selborne

Daws from the church take the chafers on my trees, & hedges.  Thomas picks the caterpillars that damage the foliage of the apricot-trees, & roll up their leaves.

Field-pease look well.  All the young rooks ave not left their nest-trees.  Glow-worms appear.

Hot sun, & brisk gale, sweet even.  Dusty beyond comparison.  Watered away five hogsheads of water.  Stoparola has five eggs.  Rooks live hard:  there are no chafers.  Barley & oats do not come up;  the fields look naked.  Some pairs of swifts always build in this village under the low thatched roofs of some of the meanest cottages:  & as there fails to be nests in those particular houses, it looks as if some of the same family still returned to the same place.

The swallows pursue the magpies & buffet them.  Wall-fruit swells.

The crows, rooks, & daws in great numbers continue to devour the chafers on the hanger. Was it not for those birds chafers would destroy everything. Rooks, now their young are flown, do not roost on their nest-trees, but retire in the evening towards Hartley-woods. Martins roost in the their new nests as soon as ever they are large enough to contain them.

Many sorts of dragon-flies appear for the first time.  Swifts devour the small dragon-flies as they first take their flight from out their aurelias, which are lodged on the weeds of ponds.  Chafers are eaten by the turkey, the rook, & the house-sparrow.