166 BIRDS. 



summer visitors from the South, whither they duly return 

 at the end of summer, often, in their fear of being left 

 behind, leaving a late brood to die of starvation. They 

 have no very sustained song, though a low sweet twittering 

 is heard in the breeding season.] 



Common throughout England and Wales from April to 



October, the Swallow is rare in the northern Highlands 



and west of Ireland. A notion was formerly 



Swallow. current to t k e e ff ec t that these birds, instead 



of migrating, passed the winter at the bottom of lakes and 

 ponds, reappearing in early spring. In the present year 

 (1897) a gentleman wrote to the papers announcing an 

 early swallow (March 26), and hinting at the possibility of 

 the bird having wintered in the neighbourhood, though it 

 is fair to add that no allusion was made to the local pond. 

 The swallow is easily distinguished from the swift and 

 martins, in whose company it flies, by its reddish throat 

 and deeply forked green tail. There are also metallic 

 reflections in the plumage that differ from those in the 

 house-martin. Its food consists largely of gnats, which 

 it chases early and late, catching them, eating them, and 

 digesting them during its rapid flight. Few birds take less 

 rest, and when the swallow does alight on the ground, which 

 it does rather more often than some imaginative chroniclers 

 would have us believe, it must be admitted that its move- 

 ments sadly lack that grace that it exhibits on the wing. 

 One cannot have everything ; and these birds, so symbolic 

 of the poetry of motion in the air, are little better than 

 geese on the ground. The flight, however, is unique ; and 

 it has been known to cover over 120 miles in an hour. Its 

 favourite perch seems to be the telegraph wire; indeed 

 one wonders what swallows did before the introduction of 

 this useful but unsightly feature in the landscape. The 

 fact is, that on a perch of that kind the short legs and 

 long wings do not place the bird at so great a disadvantage 

 as elsewhere. The deeply forked tail must, to judge from 



