Chichester to Lewes,
particularly in the autumn of 1770.

I am, etc.

LETTER XXXIX.

SELBORNE, _Nov. 9th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--As you desire me to send you such observations as may occur, I
take the liberty of making the following remarks, that you may, according
as you think me right or wrong, admit or reject what I here advance, in
your intended new edition of the "British Zoology."

The osprey was shot about a year ago at Frinsham Pond, a great lake, at
about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a
plough and devouring a fish: it used to precipitate itself into the
water, and so take its prey by surprise.

A great ash-coloured butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted Park,
and a red-backed butcher-bird [shrike] at Selborne: they are _rarae aves_
in this county.

Crows go in pairs all the year round.

Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beachy Head, and on all the cliffs
of the Sussex coast.

The common wild pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the south
of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November; is usually
the latest winter-bird of passage. Before our beechen woods were so much
destroyed we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile together
as they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us early in spring:
where do they breed?

The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird the storm-cock,
because it sings early in the spring in blowing, showery weather; its
song often commences with the year: with us it builds much in orchards.

A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring-ousels on Dartmoor:
they build in banks on the sides of streams.

Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they
play and toy about on the wing, and particularly while they are
descending, and sometimes they stand on the ground.

Adanson's testimony seems to me to be a very poor evidence that European
swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal: he does not talk at all
like an ornithologist; and probably saw only the swallows of that
country, which I know build within Governor O'Hara's hall against the
roof. Had he known European swallows, would he not have mentioned the
species?

The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it flies: this
species appears commonly about a week before the house-