that towered above the shrubs, and thence poured forth their evening jubilee.
To name all the birds that cultivation, the erection of houses,[1] the plantation of trees and shrubs together with the attraction of a garden, brought to the place, would be tedious. It will therefore only be further observed, that the beautiful goldfinch, so long as a neighbouring hill-side was covered with thistles and other plants on the seeds of which it fed, visited the standard cherry-trees to nidify; and the spotted flycatcher, which particularly delights in pleasure-grounds and gardens, annually spent the summer there. Of the six species of British Merulidæ, the resident missel and song thrushes, and the blackbird, inhabited the place; the fieldfare and redwing, winter visitants, were to be seen in their season; and the ring-ouzel, annually during summer, frequented an adjacent rocky glen. Curlews on their way from the sea to the mountain-moor, occasionally alighted in the pasture-fields. The entire number of species seen at this place (seventy-five English acres in extent) was seventy; forty-one or forty-two of which bred there. A few others,-the kestrel, ring-ouzel, sand-martin, and quail,—built in the immediate neighbourhood.
Nearly seventy species have been noticed in Kensington Gardens, London.[2] White remarks that "Selborne parish alone has exhibited at times [120 species] more than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden. The parish comprises an extent of thirty miles in circumference; and where else within the same
- ↑ Including houses in the category may seem inadvertent. But the house-martin annually built about the windows or under the roof of the dwelling-house; as the sparrow did in the spouts; the swallow against the rafters of sheds, and the swift in apertures at the eaves:—the thrush, redbreast, and wren also, occasionally nidified in the outhouses.
- ↑ Yarrell.
