BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR 



The swifts, last to come, are also first to go, 

 spending less time in the land of their birth 

 than either swallows or martins. The fact 

 that an occasional swallow has been seen hi 

 this country during the winter months finds 

 expression in the adage that " one swallow 

 does not make a summer," and it was no 

 doubt this occasional apparition that in a less 

 enlightened age seemed to warrant the extra- 

 ordinary belief, which still ekes out a pre- 

 carious existence hi misinformed circles, that 

 these birds, instead of wintering abroad, 

 retire hi a torpid condition to the bottom of 

 lakes and ponds. It cannot be denied that 

 these waters have occasionally, when dredged 

 or drained, yielded a stray skeleton of a 

 swallow, but it should be evident to the 

 most homely intelligence that such debris 

 merely indicates careless individuals that, 

 in passing over the water, got their plumage 

 waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems 

 strange that Gilbert White, so accurate an 

 observer of birds, should actually have toyed 

 with this curious belief , though he leant rather 

 to the more reasonable version of occasional 

 hybernation in caves or other sheltered 

 86 



