Signals of Autumn 185 



effect. The colours of the landscape are more 

 decided than those of our winter months, yet lack 

 all the freshness of our normal summer. The 

 swallows are disturbed by the change, and flit 

 uneasily in the lee of the wood, or sweep low over 

 the wet, dun pastures where the grasshoppers should 

 be chirping. So they will sweep over the autumn 

 mustard fields on their last English flights in 

 October, when the due season of rains is come ; 

 but there is something disturbed and untimely 

 in this August restlessness. More marked are the 

 similar storm flights of the swifts. They are now 

 on the eve of leaving us ; they will not face the 

 autumn rains. But when wet weather beats down 

 in early August, we see their sooty sickles sweeping 

 above the heads of the yellow grain, in circles like 

 the swallows' flight, but more powerful. The 

 swifts' flight above the dead-ripe corn is one of the 

 rarer pictures in the round of the English year, and 

 may hardly be seen once in a decade. It needs an 

 early harvest time, with wind and rain on some 

 day before the corn is cut, and the swifts are gone. 

 When the sun comes out between the showers, and 

 the brown and white butterflies flutter in the wind 

 above the corn, it is curious to note that swifts, 

 like swallows, disregard this easy and apparently 

 tempting prey, and seem to be feeding exclusively 

 on insects that we cannot see. There are no brown 

 butterflies in the empty vault of sky where our 

 swifts habitually prey, though Alpine butterflies 

 of the same tribe drift at times over the tops 

 of the highest mountains. But when the swifts 



