SWALLOWS, .MARTINS, SWIFTS. AND NIGHT-JARS. 75 



would have been a white patch on his rump, and his tail would 

 have been less fully divided and shorter. If on the other 

 hand the barometer stands high, and the birds are soaring 

 overhead, it will be seen that the under parts of the martin 

 are white, whilst the swallow will show a forehead and gorget 

 of a ruddy colour. The tail difference will be equally marked 

 whether seen from above or below. It makes of the swallow 

 a bird with the body of a tit and yet a length of some seven 

 and a half inches. 



Swallows come to us early in April as a rule, but the 

 capriciousness of our spring plays them sad tricks sometimes, 

 rude Boreas being too strong at times for Zephyrus, notwith- 

 standing what the Chinese poet, Pao Chao, of the fifth 

 century says: 



'Swallows flit past, a zephyr shakes 



The plum blooms down." 



1 have seen half-frozen swallows glad to hawk round moving 

 cattle in the field for the occasional flies they put up, and I 

 have been myself accompanied by a swallow for the same 

 purpose when I have been out after spring snipe. 



It seems hardly correct to call swallows and martins wild 

 birds but there is a kind of martin that is entirely so, which, 

 whilst not particularly afraid of man or shunning him, yet 

 keeps to itself amongst the hills, or wherever it can find 

 a bank to supply room for its nest. These are the sand 

 martins, whose classical family name is Cotylc. They keep 

 to the country, and having found a hill-side or precipice, even 

 a railway cutting will do, into which they can bore holes for 

 their nesting places, proceed to excavate a tunnel to the depth 

 they require, just as mining engineers run an adit into a hill. 

 But as we have none of these in our immediate neighbourhood, 

 there is no need to dwell further on their characteristics. 



Another class of birds very much like the swallows in 

 form are the swifts. Scientifically, however, these are nearer 

 the humming birds and the night-jars than they are to the 

 true swallows. The common swift, the devilling, or devil- 

 screecher as he is sometimes called by country people in 

 England, is much more common there than he is here. Swifts 

 seem to vary in numbers yearly much more than swallows 

 do. I can remember seasons in England when there have 

 been very few. The year 1908, on the other hand, seemed 

 to me remarkable for their great numbers. It is quite a rare 

 occurrence to see swifts in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 Shanghai, but I have seen them sweeping across the sky in 

 their lightning fashion over the Feng-hwang Shan. Their 

 cry is a long-drawn scream: whence the name given them by- 

 rustic England. Pere David describes seven species includ- 

 ing those most closely allied. 



