OUR WINGED HOUSE-FELLOWS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 262, 13 December 1894, Page 4

OUR WINGED HOUSE-FELLOWS

Mr Grant Allen, in ihe English Illustrated Magazine. The martins allow us to stand close . under them on the garden terrace, and watch while they bring flies in their mouths to their callow young, Which poke out their gaping mouths at the nest door to receive, them. They know us individually, and return with punctuality and despatch to their accustomed home each summer. But when |strangers stand by, I notice that though the patent birds dart back to the nest with a mouthful of flies, they do not dare to enter it or to feed their young; they turn hurriedly on the wing, three inches from the door, with a disappointed twitter, a sharp cheep of disgust, and won't return to their 'crying chicks, which strain their wide mouths and crane their necks to be fed, till the foreign element has been eliminated from the party. For myself, I will admit, I just love the house-martins. They may be given to eating flies ; but what of that? the skylark himself, Shelley's skylark, Meredith's skylark, affects a diet of worms, and nobody thinks one penny the worse of him. Even Juliet, I don't doubt, ate lamb chops like the rest of us. Indeed, it happened to me a few mornings since, during some very hot weather, to be positively grateful for these insectivorous tastes on the part of our feathered fellowcitizens. We were sitting on the verandah, much tried by a plague of flies ; it was clear that " the blood of an Englishman" attracted whole swarms of midges and other unwelcome visitors. As soon as the housemartins became aware of this Jfact they drew nearer and nearer us in their long curves of L flight, swooping down upon the insects attracted by our presence before they had time to arrive at the verandah. We sat quite still, taking no notice of the friendly birds' manoeuvres; till after awhile they mustered up courage to come close to our faces, flying so low and approaching us bo boldly that we might almost have put out our hands and caught them. . I am aware, of course, that the martins merely regarded us from the selfish point |of view, as fine bait for midges j while we in return were glad to accept their services as vicarious fly#atchers. But oa what else are most human

societies founded save such mutual advantage ? And do we not often feel real friendship for those who serve us for hire well and faithfully P In the midst of so much general distrust of man, I accept with gratitude the confidence of the house-martins. All members of the British swallow kind are amply represented in and about our three acres. Tha common swallows breed under the thatched eaves of the ruined shed in the Frying Pan, and hawk all day over the shallow trout stream that bickers down its middle. You can tell them on the wing by their forked tail ; it is, 1 think, in part a distinguishing mark by which they recognise their own kind and discriminate it from the rrartins ; for the outer-tail feathers are particularly long and noticeable in the male birds i whence I take them to be of the nature of attractive ornaments. At the beginning of the breeding season, too, the males assume a beautiful pinky blush on the lighter parts of the plumage, which may specially be observed as they turn flashing for a moment in the bright April sunshine. The sand-martins, again, the engineers of their race, have excavated their long tunnelled nests in the crumbling yellow cliff that flanks the cutting on the high road opposite ; I love to see them fly in an unerring aim at the narrow month as they return all agog from their aerial hunting expeditions on cool summer evenings. They are the smallest aud dingiest of our swallows ; they have ; no sheeny blue-black plumage like j their handsome cousins, but are pale ; brown above and dirty yellow ' below. The house-martin, last of all, can be recognised at once upon the wing by his conspicuous belt of pure white plumage, almost dazzling in its brilliancy, which stretches in a band across the lower half of his back ; as he pirouettes on the wing, this badge of his kind gleams for a moment against the sky and then fades as if by magic. His shorter tail scarcely shows forked at a distance, but when you watch him at close quarters, it is delightful to observe how he broadens or narrows it as he flies, to steady and steer himself. In order to fully appreciate this point, however, you must have the quick keen eye .of the born observer. At for the pure black swifts, those canonical birds that haunt the village steeple, they are not swallows at all, but dark and long-winged nothern representatives of the humming birds and trogons. All these alike are migrants in England, for they can but come to ,us when insects on the wing are cheap and plentiful.