The swift is the mystic among birds. He is aloof from other birds—apart from life. He is never seen to perch unless it be on the rigging of a ship during migration. The swift is black, he screams shrilly as he darts through the air, his wings are curved like a boomerang. During June I have seen and heard them long after midnight, whole cohorts of them wheeling in the sky, their cries sounding like the thin jingle of a frail chain. I verily believe that some remain on the wing (not the brooding females, of course) from dawn till dawn. They pass my cottage door a foot away from my head, their wings hissing. Under the ancient thatch they nest, plunging, it seems, straight into the holes. This is necessary, because a swift clings with difficulty; for some reason all its four toes are in front of the foot. Through the dark holes they creep, to reach the nests of saliva, cobwebs, and straw-speck laid like a mouldered saucer on the lath and plaster.
One midsummer eve a great commotion brought me to my doorway. I looked out and saw about half a hundred swifts pursuing a great barn owl, white and slow-fanning, holding in one dropped foot a limp rat. The owls are nesting on the lath and plaster of my cottage, but they do not interfere with the swifts.
When the wheat is nearly ready for the reaping, the swifts begin to think of the journey to Africa. They are among the last birds to arrive here in the spring, but the first to depart (excepting the cuckoo). When the Voice speaks in the night they mount many miles, flying up to the stars, and rush to the south. It is a sad time for some birds, as the instinct for migration is so intense that if any young are unable to fly they are left. What caused this remorseless migration in the first place, and why does it happen? Nobody knows. It is one of the problems insoluble by research or reasoning; insoluble as the mystery of life itself.
SAMARITANS
Towards the end of August a pair of house-martins (or eave-swallows—I prefer the name given them by Richard Jefferies) came to my cottage wall, and clung, two slim, black-and-white fairies, to the rough cob surface. Excited twitterings and peckings for a minute, then they flew away. Almost immediately one returned with a beakful of mud, taken from the verge of a ruddle-red pool in the roadway. This was tacked to the wall, close under the ragged fringe of thatch, and away sped the bird as her mate came with his burden. All day they worked, seeming never to feed.
But the nest grew slowly. Perhaps their other muddied cup had been knocked down by boys, or sparrows had seized it; by their intense eagerness it appeared to me that their first brood had failed altogether; there was something of the frenzy of April in their labour.
In the evening I was amazed by what I saw. The toiling pair had been joined by about a dozen other martins, all bearing beakfuls of mud and grass to the precipitous site. In regular order came mud, quickly moulded and kneaded into place, then came a broken straw, a rootlet, or a twitch of grass. There was just time to place this in position before another bird would arrive. A sweet soft trickle of eagerness fell continually from just above my window. The next morning succour was still availing, and quickly the nest grew. We discussed this in the village, but even the oldest granfer had never heard tell of such a thing before. Toilers in the harvest fields (the “unimaginative labourers”) paused and regarded. They were interested, and many pondered the problem with me.
“League o’ Nations,” grinned one. “There is much friendship among birds,” I said. “Aiy, aiy!” agreed another, and told me in the soft melodious burr of the west country how, in his garden that spring, a robin had fed a nest of hedge-sparrows.
The nest was finished in three days. The lining of feathers was a speedy business, for I scattered a handful on the ground beneath, wishing to give my small aid. I am sure the pair were grateful, for on the fourth day, when I inspected from a ladder, the first egg was laid and the mother was not alarmed by my intrusion.
This intensive construction is not usual. It is not instinctive. It is the result of reason and decency of life in their colonies. Rooks, being amoral, would not help one another. Martins live together in trust and decency. Who, hearing their song (jumbled though it may be), can doubt this.