12, 1771.
Dear Sir,
You are, I know, no great friend to migration; and the well attested
accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to justify you in
your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave
us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a
torpid state, to slumber away the more uncomfortable months till
the return of the sun and fine weather awakens them.
But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because
migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in
Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he
has ocular demonstration for many weeks together, both spring and
fall: during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the
Straits from north to south, and from south to north, according to
the season. And these vast migrations consist not only of
hirundines but of bee-birds, hoopoes, oro pendolos or golden
thrushes, etc., etc., and also many of our soft-billed summer-birds
of passage; and moreover of birds which never leave us, such as all
the various sorts of hawks and kites.
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