156 SPRING 



sweeter and more skilful music than when we catch it more 

 brokenly among all the other voices of day. Swallows 

 perch more readily on trees than martins, which seldom 

 venture to settle on anything less rocklike than the roof or 

 eaves, except when they perch on the telegraph wires, which 

 are the favourite resting-places of this family. But even the 

 swallows choose branches without many leaves, which might 

 entangle their long folded wings, and prevent them flinging 

 themselves freely on the air. So they prefer dead limbs to 



live ones, and are fonder still 

 of some bare wooden perch 

 like the handle of a plough, or 

 a hayrake leaning over a wall. 

 These long pointed wings 

 and the strongly forked tail 

 serve with the stronger and 

 more sweeping flight to dis- 

 tinguish swallows from either 

 kind of martin when seen in 

 the air. Not till late summer, 

 when the young swallows 

 with their shorter tails become common, does this easy 

 mark of distinction begin to fail. The flight of sand-martins 

 displays an odd mixture of the true sweeps and circles of the 

 swallow tribe, with a weak mothlike fluttering. Swifts are 

 distinguishable from swallows by their much larger size and 

 greater rapidity and power. When the birds can be seen 

 at close quarters in a favourable light, their difference of 

 marking is conspicuous. The little sand-martin is mouse- 

 coloured, like the crag- martin, which stoops and flutters 

 about the grass-fields in Swiss villages. Swallows can be 

 distinguished from house-martins by their patch of russet 

 on the throat as they sit on a perch, and by their dark upper 



SAND-MARTIN 



