THE LITTLE GREEN BEE-EATER 57 



skinned people if the teeming clouds of flies and 

 mosquitoes were not held in some check by these 

 industrious birds, which are all day long steadily 

 trying to reduce their numbers. 



By modern naturalists the Common Swift is 

 not placed along with the Swallow, but comes 

 near the Bee-eaters and Nightjars, and I therefore 

 place my notes on this bird at this point. 



When I arrived early in October 1907 at Deir-el- 

 Bahari, I saw thousands upon thousands of Swifts 

 flying round in never-ending circles, and all, as far 

 as I was able to identify them, the same Swift 

 that goes shrieking its weird song down every town 

 and village in rural England. Night after night, in 

 the wonderful glow that follows the actual sunset, 

 I used to go to the top of the great cliffs that over- 

 hang Queen Hatashu's temple, where round me 

 raced here, there, and everywhere, these great clouds 

 of birds, sometimes so near me, as I sat quietly hidden 

 in a niche of the rocks, that I could easily have 

 knocked them down with a stick ; whilst others 

 were high, high up, circling round. Every now and 

 then so close they came, shrilly shrieking and scream- 

 ing, one after another, in follow-my-leader fashion, 

 that I felt the cool fanning of the air from their 



