The Natural History of Selborne

My great oak abounds in bloom, which is of a yellowish cast: the young shoots usually look red. The house-martins at Mareland, in the few hot days, began to build, but when the winds became cold again immediately desisted.

The season is so cold, that no species of Hirundines make any advances towards building, & breeding.  Brother Benjamin & Mrs. White, & Mary White, & Miss Mary Barker came.

Mr Burbey has got eleven martins nests under the eaves of his old shop.

In Alton

Went, & dined with my Brother Benjamin White at Mareland, to which he & his wife were come down for two or three days.  We found the house roomy, & good, & abounding with conveniences: the out-door accommodations are also in great abundance, such as a larder, pantry, dairy, laundry, pigeon-house, & good stables.  The view from the back front is elegant, commanding sloping meadows thro’ which runs the Wey (the stream  from Alton to Farnham) meandering in beautiful curves, & shewing a rippling fall occasioned by a tumbling bay formed by Mr. Sainesbury, who also widened the current.  The murmur of this water-fall is heard from the windows.  Behind the house next the turnpike are three good ponds, & round the extensive outlet a variety of pleasant gravel walks.  Across the meadows the view is bounded by the Holt: but up & down the valley the prospect is diversifyed, & engaging.  In short Mareland is a very fine situation, & a very pleasing Gentleman’s seat.  I was much amused with the number of Hirundines to be seen from the windows: for besides the several martins and swallows belonging to the house, many Swifts from Farnham range up & down the vale; & what struck me most were forty or firty bank-martins, from the heaths, & sand-hills below, which follow the stream up the meadows, & were the whole day long busied in catching the several sorts of Ephemerae which at this season swarm in the neighbourhood of the waters.  The stream below the house abounds with trouts.  Nine fine coach-horses were burnt in a stable at Alresford.

The gale rises, & falls with the sun. Levant weather.  Some house-martins at Stockwell-chappel.

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

My Bror. Thomas White nailed-up several large ‘scallop shells under the eaves of his house at South Lambeth, to see if the house-martins would build in them.  These conveniences had not been fixed half an hour, before several pairs settled upon them;  &, expressing great complacency, began to build immediately.  The shells were nailed on horizontally with the hollow side upward;  & should, I think, have a hole drilled in their bottoms to letoff moisture from driving rains.

A pair of swallows hawk for flies ’til within a quarter of nine o’clock; they probably have young hatched.

Sparrows take possession of the martins nests.  When we shot the cock, the hen soon found another male; & when we killed the hen, the cock soon procured another mate; & so on for three or four times.

From the egg-shells flung-out it appears that young martins are hatched in a nest built last year.  The curcumstance of the ready-built nest makes the brood so much the forwarder.