190 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



probable that he heard the cirl on every summer day 

 during the greater part of his life. 



The swifts at Selborne interested me even more, 

 and I spent a good many hours observing them ; but 

 the swifts I watched were not, strange to say, the 

 native Selborne birds. When I arrived I took parti- 

 cular notice of the swallows and swifts a natural thing 

 to do in Gilbert White's village. The swallows, I was 

 sorry to find, had decreased so greatly in numbers 

 since my former visits that there were but few left. 

 The house-martins, though still not scarce, had also 

 fallen off a good deal. Of swifts there were about 

 eight or nine pairs, all with young in their nests, hi 

 holes under the eaves of different cottages. The old 

 birds appeared to be very much taken up with feed- 

 ing their young : they ranged about almost in solitude, 

 never more than four or five birds being seen together, 

 and that only in the evening, and even when in company 

 they were silent and then* flight comparatively languid. 

 This continued from the 12th to the 16th, but on that 

 day, at a little past seven o'clock in the evening, I was 

 astonished to see a party of over fifty swifts rushing 

 through the air over the village in the usual violent 

 way, uttering excited screams as they streamed by. 

 Rising to some height in the air, they would scatter 

 and float above the church for a few moments, then 

 close and rush down and stream across the Plestor, 

 coming as low as the roofs of the cottages, then along 

 the village street for a distance of forty or fifty yards, 



