A gentleman assures me that 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 as they stand on the ground.
Adamson’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-martin, and about ten or twelve days before the swift.
In 1772 there were young house-martins in their nest till October the twenty-third.
The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the house-swallow: viz., about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth of April.
Whin-chats and stone-chattel stay with us the whole year.
Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through.
Wagtails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter.
Bullfinches, when fed on hempseed, often become wholly black.