I am, etc.
Letter XVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Jan. 29, 1774.
Dear Sir,
The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first
comer of all the British hirundines; and appears in general on or
about the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked from many years'
observation. Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier:
and, in particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a
whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day
could not fall out later than the middle of March, and often
happened early in February.
It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and
mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors
happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful
springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time. A
circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration;
since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its
hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two only to
warmer latitudes.
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