192 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



for them on the 22nd: no swifts but the half-a-dozen 

 Selborne birds usually to be seen towards evening were 

 visible ; nor did they return on any other day up to the 

 24th, when my visit came to an end. 



It is possible, and even probable, that these swifts 

 which came from a distance to hold their evening 

 games at Selborne were birds that had already finished 

 breeding, and were now free to go from home and spend 

 a good deal of time in purely recreative exercises. 

 The curious point is that they should have made 

 choice of this sultry spot for such a purpose. It was, 

 moreover, new to me to find that swifts do sometimes 

 go a distance from home to indulge in such pastimes. 

 I had always thought that the birds seen pursuing each 

 other with screams through the sky at any place were 

 the dwellers and breeders in the locality; and this is 

 probably the idea that most persons have. 



I wish I could have visited Selborne again last July, 

 in order to find out whether or not the evening gather- 

 ings and pastimes of the swifts occur annually. But I 

 was engaged elsewhere, and at the village I had failed 

 to discover any person with interest enough in such 

 subjects to watch for me. It would have been very 

 strange if I had found such an one. 



It was not until October 1902 that I went back, two 

 months after the swifts had gone; but I was well 

 occupied for two or three weeks during this latest visit 

 in observing the ways of a grasshopper. 



