Letter XXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774.
Dear Sir,
As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British hirundines,
so is it undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember but one
instance of its appearing before the last week in April: and in some
of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till the
beginning of May. This species usually arrives in pairs.
The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture,
making no crust, or shell, for its nest; but forming it of dry grasses
and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. With all
my attention to these birds, I have never been able once to discover
one in the act of collecting or carrying in materials: so that I have
suspected (since their nests are exactly the same) that they
sometimes usurp upon the house-sparrows, and expel them, as
sparrows do the house and sand-martin; well remembering that I
have seen them squabbling together at the entrance of their holes;
and the sparrows up in arms, and much disconcerted at these
intruders.
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