56 BIRDS AND MAN 



he is wholly unconscious of our benefits, that 

 when he returns in spring, overflowing with 

 gladness, to twitter his delightful airy music 

 round the house, he is not singing to us, glad to 

 see us again after a long absence, to be once more 

 our welcome guest as in past years. But so it is. 

 When there were no houses in the land he built 

 his nest in some rocky cavern, where a she-wolf 

 had her lair, and his life and music were just as 

 joyous as they are now, and the wolf suckUng her 

 cubs on the stony floor beneath was nothing to 

 him. But if by chance she chmbed a little way 

 up or put her nose too near his nest, his lively 

 twittering quickly changed to shrill cries of alarm 

 and anger. And we are no more than the 

 vanished woLf to the swallow, and so long as we 

 refrain from peeping into his nest and handling 

 his eggs or young, he does not know us, and is 

 hardly conscious of our existence. All the social 

 feelings and sympathy of the swallow are for 

 creatures as aerial and swift-winged as itself — its 

 playmates in the wide fields of air. 



Swallows hawking after flies in a village street, 

 where people are walking about, is a famfliar 

 sight. Swifts are just as confident. A short time 



