On the evening of 18th September a second migration was witnessed at the same spot, flock succeeding flock until it was nearly dark. On the following evening, at another point on the river at Ovington, I witnessed a third and more impressive spectacle. The valley spreads out there to a great width, and has extensive beds of reeds, bulrushes, and other water plants, with clumps and rows of alders and willows. It was growing dark; bats were flitting round me in numbers, and the trees along the edge of the valley looked black against the pale amber sky in the west, when very suddenly the air overhead became filled with a shrill confused noise, and, looking up through my binocular, I saw at a considerable height an immense body of swallows travelling in a south-westerly direction. A very few moments after catching sight of them they paused in their flight, and, after remaining a short time at one point, looking like a great swarm of bees, they began rushing wildly about, still keeping up their shrill excited twittering, and coming lower and lower by degrees; and finally, in batches of two or three hundred birds, they rushed down like lightning into the dark reeds, shower following shower of swallows at intervals of two or three seconds, until the last had vanished and the night was silent again.
It was time for them to go, for though the days were warm and food abundant, the nights were growing cold.
The early hours are silent, except for the brown owls that hoot round the cottage from about four o'clock until dawn. Then they grow silent, and the morning is come, cold and misty, and all the land is hidden by a creeping white river-mist. The sun rises, and is not seen for half an hour, then appears pale and dim, but grows brighter and warmer by degrees; and in a little while, lo! the mist has vanished, except for a white rag, clinging like torn lace here and there to the valley reeds and rushes. Again, the green earth, wetted with mist and dews, and the sky of that soft pure azure of yesterday and of many previous days. Again the birds are vocal; the rooks rise from the woods, an innumerable cawing multitude, their voices filling the heavens with noise as they travel slowly away to their feeding-grounds on the green open downs; the starlings flock to the bushes, and the feasting and chatter and song begin that will last until evening. The sun sets crimson and the robins sing in the night and silence. But it is not silent long; before dark the brown owls begin hooting, first in the woods, then fly across to the trees that grow beside the cottage, so that we may the better enjoy their music. At intervals, too we hear the windy sibilant screech of the white owl across the valley. Then the wild cry of the stone-curlew is heard as the lonely bird wings his way past, and after that late voice there is perfect silence, with starlight or moonlight.
INDEX
Account of English Ants, by the Rev. W. Gould, quoted, [88], [93]
Adder, life remaining in severed head of, [76]; its basking-place, [80]; its consciousness of human presence, [82]
"Adder-stinger," New Forest name for the dragon-fly, [121]