I only saw a few larks and whin-chats,
some rooks, and several kites and buzzards.
About Midsummer a flight of cross-bills comes to the pine-groves
about this house, but never makes any long stay.
The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still
continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the
twentieth of November, and came out again for one day on the
thirtieth: it lies now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall
facing to the south, and is enveloped at present in mud and mire!
Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which
seem to get their livelihood very easily; for they spend the greatest
part of the day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. These
rooks retire every evening all the winter from this rookery, where
they only call by the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods:
at the dawn of day they always revisit their nest-trees, and are
preceded a few minutes by a flight of daws, that act, as it were, as
their harbingers.
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