THE LITTLE GREEN BEE-EATER 57 
skinned people if the teeming clouds of flies and 
mosquitoes were not held in some check by these 
industrious birds, which are all day long steadily 
trying to reduce their numbers. 
By modern naturalists the Common Swift is 
not placed along with the Swallow, but comes 
near the Bee-eaters and Nightjars, and I therefore 
place my notes on this bird at this point. 
When I arrived early in October 1907 at Deir-el- 
Bahari, I saw thousands upon thousands of Swifts 
flying round in never-ending circles, and all, as far 
as I was able to identify them, the same Swift 
that goes shrieking its weird song down every town 
and village in rural England. Night after night, in 
the wonderful glow that follows the actual sunset, 
I used to go to the top of the great cliffs that over- 
hang Queen Hatashu’s temple, where round me 
raced here, there, and everywhere, these great clouds 
of birds, sometimes so near me, as J sat quietly hidden 
in a niche of the rocks, that I could easily have 
knocked them down with a stick; whilst others 
were high, high up, circling round. Every now and 
then so close they came, shrilly shrieking and scream- 
ing, one after another, in follow-my-leader fashion, 
that I felt the cool fanning of the air from their 
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