The Natural History of Selborne

Swallows strike at owls, & magpies.  Cut part of my great mead: grass over-ripe.

No young martins out yet.  Creeping white mist.

Swifts, at least 30: at times they seem to come from other villages.

Martins hover at the mouth of their nests, & feed their young without settling.

Martins build nests & forsake them, & now build again.  Much hay spoiled: much not cut.

Young swifts helpless squabs still. Young martins not out.

*  I procured a bricklayer to open the tiles in several places of my Bro.s brewhouse in order to examine the state of swift’s nests at that season, & the number of their young.  This enquiry confirmed my suspicions that they never lay more than two eggs at a time: for in several nests which we discovered, there were only two squab young apiece.  As swifts breed but once in a summer, & the other hirundines twice: the latter, who lay from four to six eggs, encrease five times as fast as the former: & therefore it is not to be wondered that swifts are very numerous.

Bees gather much from the bloom of the buck-thorn, rhanmus catharticus & somewhat from the new shoots of the laurel.

Bees swarm & sheep are shorn.  My firs did not blow this year.

Farmer Canning plows with two teams of asses, one in the morning, & one in the afternoon: at night these asses are folded on the fallows; & in the winter they are kept in a straw-yard where they make dung.

Swallows feed their young in the air.  Martins, & swallows, that have numerous families, are continually feeding them: while swifts that have but two young to maintain, seem much at their leisure, & do not attend on their nests for hours together, nor appear at all in blowing wet days.  Swifts retire to their nests in very heavy showers.