This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of at Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks (Loxiæ curvirostræ) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves belonging to this house; the water-ouzel is said to haunt the mouth of the Lewes river, near Newhaven; and the Cornish chough builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore.
I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ouzels (my newly discovered migrators) scattered, at intervals, all along the Sussex downs, from Chichester to Lewes. Let them come from whence they will, it looks very suspicious that they are cantoned along the coast in order to pass the channel when severe weather advances. They visit us again in April, as it should seem, in their return; and are not to be found in the dead of winter. It is remarkable that they are very tame, and seem to have no manner of apprehensions of
danger from a person with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelmstone. No doubt you are acquainted with the Sussex downs; the prospects and rides round Lewes are most lovely!
As I rode along near the coast I kept a very sharp look-out in the lanes and woods, hoping I might, at this time of the year, have discovered some of the summer short-winged birds of passage crowding towards the coast in order for their departure: but it was very extraordinary that I never saw a red-start, white-throat, black-cap, uncrested wren, fly-catcher, etc. And I remember to have made the same remark in former years, as I usually come to this place annually about this time. The birds most common along the coast, at present, are the stone-chatters, whinchats, buntings, linnets, some few wheatears, titlarks, etc. Swallows and house-martins abound yet, induced to prolong their stay by this soft, still, dry season.
A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little walled court belonging to the house where I now am visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, and comes forth again about the middle of April. When it first appears in the spring it discovers very little inclination towards food; but in the height of summer grows voracious; and then as the summer declines its appetite declines; so that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky
plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sowthistles, are its favourite dish. In a neighbouring village one was kept till by tradition it was supposed to be a hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile!
LETTER VIII
Selborne, Dec. 20th, 1770.
Dear Sir,—The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows (Passeres torquati).
There are doubtless many home internal migrations within this kingdom that want to be better understood: witness those vast flocks of hen-chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without hardly any cocks among them. Now was there a due proportion of each sex, it should seem very improbable that any one district should produce such numbers of these little birds; and much more when only one-half of the species appears; therefore we may conclude that the Fringillœ cœlebes, for some good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own in which the sexes part. Nor should it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of sexes in this species of bird should be interrupted in winter; since in many animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, except at the season when commerce is necessary for the continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see “Fauna Suecica,” p. 58, and “Systema Naturæ,” p. 318. I see every winter vast flights of hen-chaffinches, but none of cocks.