The Natural History of Selborne

A fly-catcher brings out a brood of young: & yet they will all withdraw & leave us by the 10th of next month.

One Fly-catcher builds in the Virginia Creeper, over the garden-door: & one in the vine over the parlor-window. Between Newton & us we heard three Fern-owls chattering on the hill; one at the side of the High-wood, one at the top of the Bostal, & one near the Hermitage. That at the top of the Bostal is heard distinctly in my orchard. Fern-owls haunt year by year nearly the same spots.

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.

Cut 31 cucumbers.  Fly-catcher still appears.

Some young broods of fly-catchers fly about.

A fly-catcher has built a nest in the great apricot-tree, in which there is one egg.

My fly-catchers left their nest this day.

The Flycatcher, which was not seen ’till the 18th, has got a nest and four eggs.

Some fly-catchers: but they do not yet begin to build.  Carrots drawn.

In Richd Bulter’s garden there is a Fly-catcher’s nest built in a very peculiar manner, being placed on a shelf that is fixed against the wall of an out-house, not five feet from the ground;  & behind the head of an old rake lying on the shelf.  On the same spot a pair of the same birds built last year; but as soon as there were young the nest was torn down by a cat.