76 
BIRDS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
■emigrate for the like purpose. Other opinions, however, agree with observations 
I have made respecting these birds; which is, that they rest or sleep during the 
winter months in lakes or rivers, or in the sand-banks or sedges of such places,” 
and he further argues that, as at the beginning of April of that year numbers 
appeared in St. Margaret’s pasture and the Abbey Meadow, and afterwards 
disappeared, as they often do, for a time, during cold or stormy weather, they 
had remained under water, for he gravely concludes : — “ From the above remarks, 
and similar observations I have made at other places in the spring of the year, 
we may conclude that, as the power of the sun increases, or as the season may 
be mild, their appearance is regulated ; and that they are not tempted to leave 
the places near their winter habitations, till all Nature is, as it were, re-animated 
by the approach of summer.” 
Harley recorded that on the 31st of May, 1855, the temperature was 
unusually low, attended by a strong north-east wind, with heavy rain and sleet. 
Hundreds of Swallows and Martins perished from the cold and rain, as at 
farmsteads in Lubbesthorpe, Glenfield, and elsewhere. He also wrote : — “ On 
the 19th November, 1845, at noon, while the wind was blowing a gale from the 
south-west, we observed a single example of H. rustica, a young bird of the 
year, flitting across the London Road in every direction, overhead, immediately 
below the toll-gate.” In 1887, I saw a solitary young bird so late as the 
7th Nov., feebly flying over the houses near Aylestone Church, crossing and 
re-crossing quite near me several times, this being the latest date recorded for 
the counties since Harley’s time. 
At Aylestone I have found the Swallow to be treble-brooded. 
Elkington received one purely white in 1880. In iMay, 1885, I saw a curious 
variety, a young bird, in the possession of j\Ir. W. Whitaker, of Wistow, in which 
the wings, tail, and back were greyish-white, the throat faintly rufescent, the 
under parts almost of the normal colour but paler, the head and nape faintly 
tinged with dusky brown, the oval spots on the tail-feathers shewed but dimly, 
and were of an isabelline colour. Mr. J. B. Ellis has presented to the Museum 
a variety almost precisely similar to that possessed by iMr. Whitaker, which he 
shot at Bardon Hill on the 12th Aug., 1886. Mr. Ward says this specimen was 
reared in the Cow-shed at Quarry Farm, where his children saw it in the nest. 
It was fully plumaged, without, of course, the long outer tail-feathers of the 
adult, and appeared on dissection to be a female. I think it is, if anything, 
whiter than the Wistow specimen, but it was not an albino, it having dark, or 
greyish-brown, irides. 
In Rutland. — A summer migrant, commonly distributed, and breeding. — I 
.saw, in the possession of Mr. R. Tryon, a specimen shot by C. Masters, about 1881. 
This was a variety precisely similar to those I have recorded for Leicestershire, 
which gives me the impression that this is constant, like the yellow Mole and 
Water-'S'ole recorded at pages 13 and 23. 
