n6 WILD BIRDS 



the binding and piling up of all these thousands of 

 acres of shocks of corn. 



THE GLORIOUS SWIFT 



Years ago I watched the swifts rushing to roost 

 under the roof of a house in Leamington ; that and 

 the hover of the kestrel were my first studies of 

 natural flight. I was staying with Miss A. E. Dar- 

 win, and I remember telling her how these uncanny 

 fliers could dip down over the roof, and up to the 

 very eaves where they slept, at thirty or forty miles 

 an hour. They struck the wall with their glorious 

 scythe wings thrust forward, and less than a moment 

 later were out of sight under the eaves. I heard the 

 sound of the stiff quills of their wings brushed smartly 

 on the brickwork. Choosing a favourable spot, 

 and watching swifts at roost time, one could see 

 this feat of feathers any evening in July for I 

 cannot take gravely that charming story about the 

 swifts sleeping high aloft in their beds of air. But 

 in July there was little time to lose, for the swifts 

 were ready to go south. 



They spend a bare four months in England, and 

 mostly they will be gone by September, the month 

 when we often get sweet air and quiet skies, and 

 when there must still be plenty of insect food. Why, 

 indeed, the swift should go so soon, why he should 

 be like the cuckoo, a " too quick despairer," we can- 

 not tell ; even if the higher air has little insect life 

 in September, the lower is still full of it, as the swal- 



