The Natural History of Selborne

Lanius minor ruffus, red-backed butcher-bird, shot near the village.  It’s gizzard was full of the legs & parts of beetles.

Rudiments of wasps’ nests are found.  No chaffers, or tree beetles, appear yet.  The wasps’ nest contained eleven eggs in eleven cells.

Young wood-larks come forth.  My apple trees are but poorly blown.

Returned to Selborne.  Melon-fruit in bloom.  A brace of sand-pipers (tringa minor) at James Knight’s ponds.

Green gooseberries.

The grass-hopper lark chirps concealed at the bottom of hedges.

Grass-hopper lark chirps at eight o’ the Clock in the evening.

I saw a small Ichneumon-fly laying it’s eggs on, ir in the aurelia of a papilio.

Cut a brace of large cucumbers.

Nuthatch, sitta, makes its jarring, clattering noise in the trees.