A HOSTELRY FOR SWALLOWS 
209 
Grantham and Lincoln — even of martins I saw but very few. 
The great gathering I had witnessed in Oxfordshire was no 
doubt one of strangers to our county, and probably of travellers 
from the north of England — the numbers were far too great to 
be accounted for as local birds. I may add, by the way, that 
among them that hot evening there was a very small and swift 
hawk which 1 am disposed to think was a merlin accompanying 
the travellers in their journey from the north or west ; but the 
merlin has been rarely seen so far south in September, and it is 
quite possible that the bird, which was too far off for me to 
distinguish it clearly, may have been only a small male sparrow- 
hawk. I did not see it actually attack any of the swallows. 
On the 13th I returned home, and that evening found another 
immense assembly in the same place. After I had been watching 
them for some time as they dropped into the osiers like shooting 
stars — not like falling leaves or snowflakes, but with a swift rush 
downwards in a slanting direction, which was often changed at 
right angles as the bird approached the cover — I thought 1 
should like to see for myself what the interior of this vast 
caravanserai was like when filled with its nightly horde of 
pilgrims. The osiers were very thick, and full of flies and 
stinging nettles, and when I emerged from their recesses I was 
considerably towzled, stung, and bitten, but I was well repaid. 
The first birds I saw were not swallows but pied wagtails, 
looking (as I thought) somewhat nervous and disconcerted at 
finding their favourite roosting place occupied by this over- 
whelming flight of strangers : there was also a single yellow 
wagtail. The swallows were all together in the centre of the 
osier-bed, as I gathered from the almost deafening chatter and 
gossip which was going on ahead of me. Pushing on, I came 
to an open space of a few square yards, and here took my stand. 
In front of me the osiers were full of swallows, nearly all of 
them young birds, as far as I could judge by the fast waning 
light — some so young as to be opening their bills as if wishing 
to be fed. But there must have been a few old birds among 
them, for I saw a young one fed two or three times as it sat 
face to face with one that must have been its parent. I can 
hardly have been mistaken ; and yet one wonders how in these 
immense flights a parent can keep its young in view and descend 
with them into this dense cover without losing them. All the 
birds were perched at a height of from five to ten feet from the 
ground, for the most part clinging to a leaf or twig at its junction 
Avith the stem of the withy. I saw no martins among them. 
As I stood there watching, the downward rush continued at 
short intervals. Several times I thought I should have been 
hit, so nearly did the bullet-like swish pass by my head in 
the dusk. Looking up I could see the swarms of real gnats 
just above me, and up in the sky a cloud of gnat-like swallows 
still careering about with endless chatter ; but the cloud was 
getting thinner and thinner as they went on dropping into the 
cover where I stood. 
