The Natural History of Selborne

Large gulls on the downs.  Some bustards are bred in the parish of Findon. Fieldfares.

Flocks of chaffinches: & multitudes of buntings at the foot of mount Caborn.  Rooks visit their nest-trees every morning just at the dawn of day, being preceeded a few minutes by a flight of daws: & again about sunset.  At the close of day they retire into deep woods to roost.

Rooks attend their nest-trees in frost only morning & evening.

White wag-tail.

Rooks spend most of their time in mild weather on their nest-trees; some stares & jack-daws attend them.

The county of Sussex abounds in turneps.

The tortoise in Mrs Snooke’s garden went under ground Novr 21: came-out on the 30th for one day, & retired to the same hole lies in a wet border in mud & mire!  with it’s back bare.  In the late floods the water at Houghton ran over the clappers, & at Bramber into men’s ovens.

Not one wheat-ear to be seen on the downs.  The grubs of the scarabaeus solstitialis abound on the downs: the rooks dig them out.  On what do they feed when they come forth?  for there are no trees on the South downs.

Birds on the downs are rooks, larks, stone-chats, kites, gulls: some field-fares, some hawks.

Bright, sunny, soft.