It Was Just To Get This General Rapid Sight
Of The Bird Life Of The Neighbouring Hilly District Of
Hampshire
That I was at Newbury on the last day of October.
The weather was bright though very cold and windy,
And towards
evening I was surprised to see about twenty swallows in
Northbrook Street flying languidly to and fro in the shelter
of the houses, often fluttering under the eaves and at
intervals sitting on ledges and projections. These belated
birds looked as if they wished to hibernate, or find the most
cosy holes to die in, rather than to emigrate. On the
following day at noon they came out again and flew up and down
in the same feeble aimless manner.
Undoubtedly a few swallows of all three species, but mostly
house-martins, do "lie up" in England every winter, but
probably very few survive to the following spring. We should
have said that it was impossible that any should survive but
for one authentic instance in recent years, in which a
barn-swallow lived through the winter in a semi-torpid state
in an outhouse at a country vicarage. What came of the
Newbury birds I do not know, as I left on the 2nd of November
- tore myself away, I may say, for, besides meeting with
people I didn't know who treated a stranger with sweet
friendliness, it is a town which quickly wins one's
affections. It is built of bricks of a good deep rich red
- not the painfully bright red so much in use now - and no
person has had the bad taste to spoil the harmony by
introducing stone and stucco.
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