Hampshire Days

by W. H. Hudson

It may be said of swifts, as Bates said of hummingbirds, that, mentally, they are more like bees than birds. The infallible, unchangeable way in which they, machine-like, perform all their actions, and their absolute unteachableness, are certainly insect-like. They are indeed so highly specialised and perfected in their own line, and, on account of their marvellous powers of flight, so removed from all friction in that atmosphere in which they live and move, above the complex and wit-sharpening conditions in which the more terrestrial creatures of their class exist, as to be practically independent of experience.

It is known that for some time the mayfly has been decreasing, and in places disappearing altogether from these Hampshire streams, and it is believed and said by some of those who are concerned at these changes that the swallow is accountable for them. I do not know whether they have invented this brilliant idea themselves or have taken it ready-made from the water-keeper. Probably the last, since he, the water-keeper, is apt to regard all creatures that come to the waters where his sacred fishes are with a dull, hostile suspicion, though in some cases he is not above adding to his income by taking a few trout himself—not indeed with the dry fly, which is useless at night, but with the shoe-net. In any case the question of exterminating the swallows in all the villages near the rivers has been seriously considered. Now, it is rather odd that this notion about the swallow—the martin is of course included—should have got about just when this bird has itself fallen on evil times and is decreasing with us. This decrease has, in all parts of the country best known to me, become increasingly rapid during the last few years, and is probably due to new and improved methods of taking the birds wholesale during migration in France and Spain. Putting that matter aside, I should like to ask those gentlemen who have decreed, or would like to decree, the abolition of the swallow in all the riverside villages, what they propose to do about the swift.

Mayfly and swift

One day last June (1902) I was walking with two friends by the Itchen, when a little below the village of Ovington we sat down to rest and to enjoy a gleam of sunshine which happened to visit the world about noon that day. We sat down on a little wooden bridge over the main current and fell to watching the swifts, which were abundant, flying up and down just over our heads and, swift-like, paying no more heed to us than if we had been three wooden posts or three cows. We noticed that ephemeræ of three or four species were rising up, and, borne by a light wind, drifting down-stream towards us and past us; and after watching these flies for some time we found that not one of them escaped. Small and grey, or dun, or water-coloured and well-nigh invisible, or large and yellow and conspicuous as they rose and slowly fluttered over the stream, they were seen and snapped up, every one of them, by those fateful sooty-coloured demons of the air, ever streaming by on their swift scythe-shaped wings. Not a swallow nor a martin was in sight at that spot.

It is plain, then, that if the mayfly is declining and dying out because some too greedy bird snatches its life before it can lay its eggs to continue the species, or drop upon the water to supply the trout with its proper succulent food, the swift and not the swallow is the chief culprit.

It is equally plain that these (from the angler's point of view) injurious birds are not breeders by the waterside. Their numbers are too great: they come, ninety per cent. of them I should say, from farm-houses, villages, and towns at a distance of a good many miles from the water.

The revels of the swifts were brought prematurely to an end by a great change in the weather, which began with a thunderstorm on 27th July, and two days later a greater storm, with hail the size of big marrowfat peas, which fell so abundantly that the little lawn was all white as if snow had fallen. From that time onwards storm succeeded storm, and finally the weather became steadily bad; and we had rough, cold, wet days right on to the 10th of August. It was a terrible time for the poor holiday people all over the country, and bad too for the moulting and late-breeding birds. As a small set-off to all the discomfort of these dreary days, we had a green lawn once more at the cottage. I had made one or two attempts at watering it, but the labour proved too great to a lazy man, and now Nature had come with her great watering-pot and restored its spring-like verdure and softness.

During the wettest and coldest days I spent hours watching the swallows and swifts flying about all day long in the rain. These are, indeed, our only summer land-birds that never seek a shelter from the wet, and which are not affected in their flight by a wetted plumage. Their upper feathers are probably harder and more closely knit and impervious to moisture than those of other kinds. It may be seen that a swallow or swift, when flying about in the rain, at short intervals gives himself a quick shake as if to throw off the raindrops. Then, too, the food and constant exercise probably serve to keep them warmer than they would be sitting motionless in a dry place. Swifts, we sometimes see, are numbed and even perish of cold during frosty nights in spring; I doubt that the cold ever kills them by day when they can keep perpetually moving.

Sand-martins

Day by day, during this long spell of summer wet and cold, these birds diminished in number, until they were almost all gone—swifts, swallows, and house-martins; but we were not to be without a swallow, for as these went, sand-martins came in, and increased in numbers until they were in thousands. We had them every day and all day before us, flying up and down the valley, in the shelter of the woods, their pale plumage and wavering flight making them look in the distance like great white flies against the wall of black-green trees and gloomy sky beyond.