152 Wild Lifein a Southern County. 
they fly up to roost on the beams in the sheds, beat 
out feathers from their clumsy wings ; these lie scat- 
tered on the ground, marking the spot. These 
roosting-places are magazines from which the small 
birds draw their supplies for domestic purposes. The 
sparrows have their nests in lesser holes in the thatch: 
sometimes they use a swallow’s nest built of mortar 
under the eaves, to which the owners have not re- 
turned. 
The older folk still retain some faint superstitions 
about swallows, looking upon them as semi-conse- 
crated and not to be killed or interfered with, They 
will not have their nests knocked down. If they do 
not return to the eaves but desert their nests it is a 
sign of misfortune impending over the household. 
So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or the colonies 
of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard 
decay and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an 
evil omen. If at night a bird flutters against the 
window-pane in the darkness—as they will sometimes 
in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their 
roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and 
attracted by a light within—the knocking of their 
wings betokens that something sad is about to 
happen. If an invalid asks for a pigeon—taking a 
fancy to a dish of pigeons to eat —it is a sign either 
of coming dissolution or of extreme illness. 
But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, 
and soon begin to repair their nests or build new 
