Abstract
ON the morning of Friday, August 10, I witnessed a large flight of Swifts travelling westward along the Sussex coast. The birds were passing this place in a continuous though thin stream for several hours; I saw them myself from 10 a.m. when I first visited the shore, and watched them till 12 noon. A few birds were also noted travelling in the same direction between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. The day was bright but showery, and a fresh W.N.W. breeze was blowing at the time, so that the birds were flying almost against the wind; they flew low, seldom rising fifteen feet in the air, and often passing within two feet of my head as I lay on the shingle; they kept to the coast-line and for the most part over the top of the fringe of tamarisks that here stretch for miles just above the shingle. Since that day I have not seen a single Swift in the neighbourhood, in spite of having travelled on my bicycle as far west as the mouth of Chichester Harbour along the coast, and to various places north of this liné as far as Chichester and Arundel inland. It would be interesting to know if other observers witnessed any similar flights on August 10, and also if Swifts are still to be seen in any places in our islands at the present time. I have on two previous occasions seen Swifts arrive on the east coast of Norfolk as late as the first week in September (after a complete dearth of the birds for some three weeks), and depart again after a few days' sojourn—these perhaps are migrants from the European continent. As many of your readers are now doubtless at the seaside, it seems a favourable opportunity to ask them to keep their eyes open and record any facts that they may observe bearing on the movements of these birds.
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LATTER, O. The Migration of Swifts. Nature 62, 413 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/062413c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/062413c0
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