86 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



insect life increases, they leave the rivers and hawk over the 

 marsh grasses for moths, or along the white roads. 



And towards the month of May you see pairs flying 

 through the air twittering — courting — ere they begin to build 

 their daub- and- wattle cradles beneath the bridges across 

 the dikes, or under the bridges over the water-mill outlets, 

 secure from wet. You may watch both birds in the clear, 

 bland air, carrying bits of dead rush, straw, and soft pellets 

 of ooze, plastering the nest together in primitive form ; and 

 as you watch the tame birds flying to and fro, making a 

 sound like the shutting and opening of a fan, by his 

 smaller size and greater blueness you may know the cock. 

 All through hawthorn-blossomed June and into July they 

 are nursing — for they raise two broods — on the pleasant 

 marsh ; or later they take to old sheds on the sandhills, 

 for flies are plentiful there ; and their five spotted eggs are 

 laid in a curious bed of feathers, and the final sitting begins, 

 both birds taking turns at incubation. Whilst one is sitting 

 the other is abroad feeding on moths startled by the mowers 

 from the coarse swathes of marsh grass, on flies hovering over 

 the reed-beds, on dead flies blown into the water and washed 

 to leeward by the wind, or upon flies darting over the hot 

 sand-hills. At these seasons, too, when the young are 

 hatched, you may watch them hawking all day, often attack- 

 ing insects too large for their wide throats — victims they are 

 forced to let escape after all ; or flying low over the water, 

 dipping into it, and at times dipping so deeply that they cannot 

 get out and are drowned; or gathering "blight" from the 

 reed- beds — or you may hear their \\\.\\^ pheet-a-pheets as late 

 as half-past nine on a summer's night as they hunt along 

 the dozing trees and hedgerows. 



And the young remain in the nest imtil they are good 

 fliers, when they adventure the unknown; but not alto- 

 gether, for some leave the nest sooner than others, and at 

 this season you may see four or five young swallows sitting 

 together on a bramble or old rail. Still the old birds hunt 



