COMMON SWIFT. 343 



and another at Weasenham in the following September ; 

 and one of a light silvery grey, in the Norwich museum 

 (No. 162.a), was killed at Dereham, in 1864. 



CTPSELUS APUS (Linnaeus). 



COMMON SWIFT. 



If " one swallow does not make a summer/' the first 

 Swift is a pretty sure indication that that season has 

 commenced in earnest. The last of its race to visit us 

 in spring, and the first to leave us in the early autumn, 

 we know it only in connection with bright sunny skies, 

 long days, and sultry heat. Here, as we lay at length 

 upon the warm shingle, listening to the murmur of the 

 little waves as they ebb and flow amongst the pebbles at 

 our feet, with a soft breeze tempering the scorching 

 heat of the noon-day sun, under whose influence a 

 deceptive mirage dances and flickers above the sand- 

 hills ; suddenly the sharp screech of the passing swifts 

 is heard as they swoop past us in their mad career, and 

 still rings upon our startled ears long after their mar- 

 vellous powers of flight have borne them beyond the 

 range of vision. Soon they return again, rising and 

 falling in amorous chase, or wheel in devious circles 

 high up in the blue vault of heaven ; revelling apparently 

 in the intensity of the heat and the cessation for a time 

 from parental duties. I have often noticed this habit 

 in the swifts, of leaving the church towers and other 

 nesting places about the noon-hour, as if to stretch 

 their cramped lunbs, and seek their food at a time 

 when their eggs would least sufier from temporary 

 exposure. There is another period, too, when the swift 

 almost invariably appears abroad, though previously, 

 perhaps, unseen for hours. The air is hot and stifling. 



