Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/57

Rh reader must bear this long explanation in mind when he sees the numerous allusions to the subject in the subsequent pages.

The sand-martin is the first of the swallow kind to arrive, and the swift the last.

In the Field of April 12th, 1879, I see the following note by Mr. Henry Smith, which is apropos of the subject:—

"On Sunday last, April 6th, I saw a single swallow flying over the town of Ringwood; and on going out of the town across the river, where a large tract of meadow is generally inundated in wet weather, I saw, to my astonishment, a multitude of martins skimming over the surface of the water. This was early in the morning, just before a tremendous downpour of rain, lasting six hours. At 3 p.m., when the rain had ceased, and the sky had become clear, I went out again, and found that the air was resounding with the twittering of the birds, which were flying at a great altitude, and in vast numbers. The low flight in the early morning, and the exalted position of the birds in the afternoon, indicated on the one hand the forthcoming heavy rain, and on the other presaged the fine afternoon which followed. In all my observations of the arrival of the hirundines, I have never before noticed them in a large flock; but at their earliest date of arrival, one generally has marked their advent here and there in small numbers; their congregating in large flocks generally precedes their departure."

$e2$ Possibly the Grasshopper Warbler. This little bird has a peculiar sibilant warble, which, like the cry of the corncrake, is apparently ventriloquous. The sound seems here, there, and everywhere, and it is only by the closest observation and the greatest caution that a sight of the tiny songster can be obtained.

$e3$ In the verandah of my father's house in Shropshire, four or five pairs of fly-catchers used to build, and there were other nests on a ledge in the orchard wall, so that in the summer the standard roses and the gateposts each had a fly-catcher using it as a raiding-point. The birds which rested in the verandah took not the slightest notice of people passing and repassing. Sparrows, wrens, and chaffinches also nested among the roses which trailed up it.

$e4$ The Blackcap does migrate.

$e5$ The humming of the snipe has puzzled many a naturalist to say how it was made. It is also called bleating, and, in Norfolk, "lamming," because the noise is something like that caused by a lamb. I have noticed great numbers of snipe bleating on the Norfolk Roads, and I am satisfied that it is made by the rapid vibration of the long feathers of the tail and wings. The sound is only made when the snipe is in the air and descending a little, rapidly, in an oblique direction against the wind.

$e6$ There is only one species of water-rat, and strictly speaking it is not a rat. It differs anatomically and in its mode of life from the rat. Its proper name is the water-vole. Its feet are not webbed. Its food is entirely vegetable, while the common rat, which is found in numbers by the waterside, will eat fish or