200 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



caught and put there in its feathers that the weight 

 of them had borne it down to the ground. I ventured 

 to tell him that he was wrong, that the flies he 

 had seen swarming in the plumage of a fallen swift 

 were parasitical on the bird, and that the swift was 

 probably in poor condition and so much infested 

 and tormented by the insects as to be unable any 

 longer to fly. My man looked gravely at me but 

 said nothing, and I took his silence to mean that 

 he did not believe the parasite story, or was not 

 pleased at being put right about his familiar Black 

 Jacks in the presence of his comrades, who were 

 not ornithologists. 



The old belief that the swift, when by chance he 

 comes down, is unable to rise from a flat surface owing 

 to the length of his wings, is, I think, well-nigh obso- 

 lete, although one does occasionally hear it. Swifts 

 get many a fall in spring, and are often to be seen 

 getting up again from the ground. During the last ten 

 or fifteen years starlings have increased enormously all 

 over the country. They are liked better than formerly, 

 and are not shot so much nor driven away from their 

 roosting-places in winter, nor are they used much now 

 for trap-shooting a form of sport which has been long 

 declining. One result of this increase of starlings is 

 that the bird is becoming especially numerous in the 

 towns and villages, and that in April he takes posses- 

 sion of the swift's breeding-holes under the eaves of 

 cottages, and similar situations. The swifts, on their 



