334 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



as I stood leaning on the handrail of the bridge. I 

 strained my eyes in vain to make out what they 

 were swallows or martins as in rapid succession, and 

 in twos or threes, they came before me, seen vaguely 

 as dim spots, and no sooner seen than gone, shooting 

 past my head with amazing velocity and a rushing 

 sound, fanning my face with the wind they created, 

 and some of them touching me with their wing-tips. 



On the evening of September 18 a second migra- 

 tion was witnessed a't the same spot, flock succeeding 

 flock until it was nearly dark. On the following 

 evening, at another point on the river at Ovington, 

 I witnessed a third and more impressive spectacle. 

 The valley spreads out there to a great width, and 

 has extensive beds of reeds, bulrushes, and other 

 water plants, with clumps and rows of alders and 

 willows. It was growing dark; bats were flitting 

 round me in numbers, and the trees along the edge 

 of the valley looked black against the pale amber 

 sky in the west, when very suddenly the air over- 

 head became filled with a shrill confused noise, and, 

 looking up through my binocular, I saw at a consi- 

 derable height an immense body of swallows travelling 

 in a south-westerly direction. A very few moments 

 after catching sight of them they paused in their 

 flight, and, after remaining a short time at one point, 

 looking like a great swarm of bees, they began rush- 

 ing wildly about, still keeping up their shrill excited 

 twittering, and coming lower and lower by degrees; 

 and finally, in batches of two or three hundred birds, 



