218 THE RECTORY AND ITS BIRDS 



to claim as their own, as soon as ever they were 

 first erected, some fifty years ago. The size of the 

 wires exactly suits their little feet, and enables them 

 to dart on or off without impediment, exactly as 

 the spirit moves them. As autumn advances, the 

 flocks grow in size, covering the wires for many 

 hundred feet together, as if to discuss in concert 

 measures for their approaching departure. Again 

 and again you may see them launch forth from 

 their post of vantage in a vast body, and go 

 straight away, till they are out of sight, as though 

 they are "off at last." But they will reappear again 

 and again, or perhaps they may be succeeded by 

 other flights coming southward, and resting them- 

 selves on the same wires for a time, till, one damp 

 October morning, you wake up and find that they 

 are all really gone, in their life-long pursuit of the 

 summer sun, and you realise what, for six months 

 to come, you will have lost in losing them. 



The habits of the house-martin so much 

 resemble, and are so much more easily observed 

 than those of the swallow, that I will say nothing 

 of them here, except to point out that they are 

 more fond of man and of his dwellings even than 

 the swallow, following him into the most grimy and 

 thickly populated of towns ; that the nests of the 



