When h. crickets are out, & running about in a room in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shill notes, as it were a signal to their fellows, that they may escape to their crannies & lurking-holes to avoid danger.
Small birds, Tanner says green finches, pull off my polyanth blossoms by handfulls. A neighbour complained to me that her house was over-run with a kind of black-beetle, or, as she expressed herself, with a kind of black-bob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they get up in a morning before day-break. Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney-closets; & find since that in the night they swarm also in my kitchen. On examination I soon ascertained the Species to be the Blatta orientalis of Linnaeus, & the Blatta molendinaria of Mouffet. The male is winged, the female is not; but shows somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state. These insects belonged originally to the warmer parts of America, & were conveyed fro thence by shipping to the East Indies; & by means of commerce begin to prevail in the more N. parts of Europe, as Russia, Sweden, & c. How long they have abounded in England I cannot say; but have never observed them in my house ’till lately. They love warmth, & haunt chimney-closets, & the backs of ovens. Poda says that these, & house-crickets will not associate together; but he is mistaken in that assertion, as Linn. suspected that he was. They are altogether night insects, lucifugae, never coming forth till the rooms are dark, & still, & escaping away nimbly at the approach of a candle. Their antennae are remarkably long, slender, & flexile.
Chaffinches pull-off the finest flowers of the polyanths. Ned White sailed on this day.
Bombylius medius, a hairy fly, with a long projecting snout, appears: they are seen chiefly in March & April. “Os rostro porrecto, setaceo, longissimo, bivalvi.” A dipterous insect, which sucks it’s aliment from blossoms. On the 21st of March, a single bank, or sand-martin was seen hovering & playing round the sand-pit at short heath, where in the summer they abound. I have often suspected that S. martins are the most early among the hirundines.
That noise in the air of some thing passing quick over our heads after it becomes dark, & which we found last year proceeded from the Stone-curlew, has now been heard for a week or more. Hence it is plain that these birds, which undoubtedly leave us for the winter, return in mild seasons very soon in the spring; & are the earliest summer birds that we have noticed. They seem always to go down from the uplands towards the brooks, & meads. The next early summer bird that we have remarked is the smallest Willow-wren, or chif-chaf; it utters two sharp, piercing notes, so loud in the hollow woods at to occasion an echo, & is usually first heard about the 20th of March.
Timothy the tortoise lies very close in the hedge.
About this time Ned White is to sail for Antegoa in the Lady Jane Halliday: Ross, Captain.
Planted curran-trees. The garden hoed, & cleaned.
Theme Ported to