Birds by Land and Sea 



in our neighbourhood in recent years. How attached 

 the swift is to its old quarters may perhaps be judged 

 from the following occurrence. 



There is in a neighbouring village a long street 

 formed by continuous rows of brick houses, under 

 the eaves of one of which otherwise undistinguish- 

 able from the rest several pairs of swifts yearly 

 make their homes. The occupant of this house, 

 finding small attraction in the joyous scream of the 

 birds as they broke out and dashed up and down in 

 the early hours of the spring mornings, caught one 

 of them, killed and hung it by a string under the 

 opening to one of the nests. But the dead bird 

 swung in sun and rain unheeded by his living com- 

 rades, who came and went undeterred by this public 

 witness to the brutal ignorance of the man. It 

 would argue too great confidence in the imagination 

 of this small spirit to hope that some of the horrors 

 of the "Ancient Mariner " might come to plague it ; 

 but, at any rate, there are four nests there, and as 

 each pair will probably account for a brood of two, 

 I sincerely trust that ere long sixteen birds may 

 scream sleep from the roof where the dead bird 

 hangs. 



The cuckoo, reported from Essex on the 2Oth 

 April, was heard for the first time at Ashley on the 

 2nd May, an unusually late date for this bird to 

 arrive, even in our parts. 



From the moment of its arrival the cuckoo's 

 troubles begin. A little observation suffices to show 



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