70 
“ Go back to the nest and mind the babies, I’m going up on the 
spree.’’ “No, I have not had enough to eat yet,” and she 
escapes for another mouthful, but he is after her and brings her 
back, and then joins the others. It was Mr. \Y. A. Wichell, 
the author of “ The Evolution of Bird Song,” who explained to 
me the meaning of this performance. I had often noticed it, but 
had not seen its significance. Mr. Wichell published an interest¬ 
ing article in “ Knowledge,” June ist, 1897, on The Swifts’ 
Night-Flight,” in which he gives the credit of the discovery to 
us at Orleton. In 1890 I wrote a paper containing what I knew 
about the Swifts, and it was published in “ Nature Notes,” the 
Selborne Society’s Magazine, in 1891, January-May, in the form 
of a letter to the late Lord Selborne.* * This paper brought me 
some very interesting correspondence, among others, from the 
late Duke of Argyll, who asked me to find out what the birds 
were feeding on when they were hawking very high in the air. 
The answer was— Ants —winged ants on their mating-flight—no 
flies go so high. 
But if the Swifts go up at night they must come down. Yes, 
but I have not seen them. Since I took to systematic observation 
of these birds I have had neither the health nor the resolution 
to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and wait- in the Church¬ 
yard to see them come down; but I have got two bits of 
evidence to lay before you. Mr. W. H. Hudson, in his book 
“Nature in Downland,” says that, near Wells, he was talking 
to a boy about 14 or 15 years old, a farm, labourer’s son, born 
in Priddy, on the Mendips, and the boy said: “ They screechers 
be curious birds. Did you ever hear, zur, that they be up fly¬ 
ing about all night and come back in the marning? ” Mr. 
Hudson asked him if someone had told him that, and he said “No,” 
he had found it out for himself. Morning after morning he had 
noticed, just after sunrise, that a number of Swifts suddenly 
made their appearance at the same spot, not far from a field 
that he had to watch. The birds would appear first at a great 
height, and rush straight down as if falling from the sky, until 
within a few yards of the earth, when they would dash off in 
various directions, or begin flying about the village. “ It struck 
me," says Mr. Hudson, “ as extremely improbable that this most 
circumstantial story was invented by the bov.” 
Soon after coming into this part of the world, in 1912, I 
was told I ought to go and see Hart’s Bird Museum, at Christ¬ 
church. So I went, and found Mr. Hart taking a party round 
and telling them many wonderful things about the migration of 
birds. Speaking of some of the long and rapid flights of some 
of the shore birds, he said there was nothing impossible about 
them, for the Swifts habitually spent the night in the air. I 
asked him how long he had known that, and he said, about 
A complete set of Nature Notes (now the ;1 Selborne Magazine”), 1 S00- 
1012. is now in the Hbrarv of this Society. 
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