The Natural History of Selborne

Variable winds, & clouds flying different ways.  Ricked the St foin, four jobbs.  Rather under made, but not at all damaged by the rain.  It was made in swarth, & lay 8 days.

* Most birds drink sipping a little at a time:  but pigeons take a long continued draught like quadrupeds.  Some swallows build down the mouths of the chalk draught-holes on Faringdon-common.  House-martins retire to rest pretty soon: they roost in their nest as soon as ever it is big enough to contain them.  Martins build the shell of a nest frequently, & then forsake it, & build a new one.

Fern-owl chatters in the hanger.

There seem to be more hirundines, particularly house-martins, & swifts, about Midhurst than with us.

Swifts stay out ’til within 10 minutes of 9.  Ivy-berries fallen-off.  Young grasshoppers.

House-martins gather moss, & grasses for their nests from the Roofs of houses.

Odd meteorous circle round the sun, which the common people call a mock sun.

Young broods of moor-hens appear.  Lettuces that stood the winter are very fine.  Cut my St. foin: it is in full bloom, & a good crop:  this is the seventh crop…. swifts have eggs, but do not sit. Do they lay more than two?

Chafers are pretty well gone; they did not deface the hedges this year.  When swifts mute flying, they raise their wings over their backs.

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

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