The swifts at Selborne interested me even more, and I spent a good many hours observing them; but the swifts I watched were not, strange to say, the native Selborne birds. When I arrived I took particular notice of the swallows and swifts—a natural thing to do in Gilbert White's village. The swallows, I was sorry to find, had decreased so greatly in numbers since my former visits that there were but few left. The house-martins, though still not scarce, had also fallen off a good deal. Of swifts there were about eight or nine pairs, all with young in their nests, in holes under the eaves of different cottages. The old birds appeared to be very much taken up with feeding their young: they ranged about almost in solitude, never more than four or five birds being seen together, and that only in the evening, and even when in company they were silent and their flight comparatively languid. This continued from the 12th to the 16th, but on that day, at a little past seven o'clock in the evening, I was astonished to see a party of over fifty swifts rushing through the air over the village in the usual violent way, uttering excited screams as they streamed by. Rising to some height in the air, they would scatter and float above the church for a few moments, then close and rush down and stream across the Plestor, coming as low as the roofs of the cottages, then along the village street for a distance of forty or fifty yards, after which they would mount up and return to the church, to repeat the same race over the same course again and again. They continued their pastime for an hour or longer, after which the flock began to diminish, and in a short time had quite melted away.

On the following evening I was absent, but some friends staying at the village watched for me, and they reported that the birds appeared after seven o'clock and played about the place for an hour or two, then vanished as before.

On the afternoon of the 18th I went with my friends to the ground behind the churchyard, from which a view of the sky all round can be obtained. Four or five swifts were visible quietly flying about the sky, all wide apart. At six o'clock a little bunch of half a dozen swifts formed, and began to chase each other in the usual way, and more birds, singly, and in twos and threes, began to arrive. Some of these were seen coming to the spot from the direction of Alton. Gradually the bunch grew until it was a big crowd numbering seventy to eighty birds, and as it grew the excitement of the birds increased: until eight o'clock they kept up their aerial mad gambols, and then, as on the previous evenings, the flock gradually dispersed.

On the evening of the 19th the performance was repeated, the birds congregated numbering about sixty. On the 20th the number had diminished to about forty, and an equal number returned on the following evening; and this was the last time. We watched in vain for them on the 22nd: no swifts but the half-a-dozen Selborne birds usually to be seen towards evening were visible; nor did they return on any other day up to the 24th, when my visit came to an end.

It is possible, and even probable, that these swifts which came from a distance to hold their evening games at Selborne were birds that had already finished breeding, and were now free to go from home and spend a good deal of time in purely recreative exercises. The curious point is that they should have made choice of this sultry spot for such a purpose. It was, moreover, new to me to find that swifts do sometimes go a distance from home to indulge in such pastimes. I had always thought that the birds seen pursuing each other with screams through the sky at any place were the dwellers and breeders in the locality; and this is probably the idea that most persons have.

I wish I could have visited Selborne again last July, in order to find out whether or not the evening gatherings and pastimes of the swifts occur annually. But I was engaged elsewhere, and at the village I failed to discover any person with interest enough in such subjects to watch for me. It would have been very strange if I had found such a one.

It was not until October 1902 that I went back, two months after the swifts had gone; but I was well occupied for two or three weeks during this latest visit in observing the ways of a grasshopper.

There has already been much about insects in this book, and it may seem that I am giving a disproportionate amount of space to these negligible atomies; nevertheless I should not like to conclude this chapter without adding an account of yet another species, one indeed worthy to rank among the Insect Notables of Southern England described in a former chapter. The account comes best in this place, since the species had seemed rare, or nowhere abundant, until, in October, I found it most common in Selborne parish; and here I came to know it well, as I had come to know its great green relation, Locusta viridissima, at Longparish. Both are of one family, and are night singers, but the Selborne insect belongs to a different genus—Thamnotrizon—of which it is the only British representative; and in colour and habits it differs widely from the green grasshoppers. The members of this charming family are found in all warm and temperate countries throughout the world: in this island we may say that they are at the extreme northern limit of their range. Of our nine British species only three are found north of the Thames. Thamnotrizon cinereus is one of these, but is mainly a southern species, and the latest of our grasshoppers to come to maturity. In September it is full grown, and may be heard until November. It is much smaller than viridissima, and is very dark in colour, the female, which has no vestige of wings, being of a uniform deep olive-brown, except the under surface, which is bright buttercup-yellow. The male, though smaller than the female, and like her in colour, has a more distinguished appearance on account of his small aborted wings, which serve as an instrument of music, and form a disc of ashy grey colour on his black and brown body.

The black grasshopper

Unless looked at closely this insect appears black, and might very well be called the black grasshopper. And here it is necessary once more to protest against what must be regarded as a gross neglect of a plain duty on the part of writers on our native insects who will not give English names even to the most common and interesting species. Unless it has a vernacular name they will go on speaking of it as Thamnotrizon cinereus, Cordulegaster annulatus, or whatever it may be, to the end of time. This grasshopper has no common name that I can discover: I have caught and shown it to the country people, asking them to name it, and they informed me that it was a "grasshopper," or else a "cricket." Black, or black and yellow, or autumn grasshopper would do very well: but any English name would be better than the entomologist's ponderous double name compounded out of two dead languages.