The Natural History of Selborne

Hop-picking goes on without the least interruption. Stone-curlews cry late in the evenings.  The congregating flocks of hirundines on the church & tower are very beautiful, & amusing!  When they fly-off altogether from the Roof, on any alarm, they quite swarm in the air.  But they soon settle in heaps, & preening their feathers, & lifting up their wings to admit the sun, seem highly to enjoy the warm situation.  Thus they spend the heat of the day, preparing for their emigration, &, as it were consulting when & where they are to go.  The flight about the church seems to consist chiefly of house-martins, about 400 in number: but there are other places of rendezvous about the village frequented at the same time.  The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assemblies on trees. 

“When Autumn scatters his departing gleams,/
Warn’d of appraching winter gathered play/
The swallow people; & toss’d wide around/
O’er the calm sky in convulsion swift,/
The feather’d eddy floats: rejoicing once/
Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire,/
In clusters clung beneath the mouldring bank,/
And where, unpierced by frost, the cavern sweats./
Or rather to warmer climes convey’d,/
With other kindred birds of season, there/
They twitter chearful, till the vernal months/
Invite them welcome back:– for thronging now/
Innumberable wings are in commotion all.”

My well is very low, & the water foul!  Timothy eats voraciously.  Winged female ants migrate from their nests, & fill the air.  These afford a dainty feast for the hirundines, all save the swifts; they being gone before these emigrations, which never take place till sultry weather in August, & September.

Grey crow returns, & is seen near Andover.  Some nightly thief stole a dozen of my finest nectarines.

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.