a long musical twittering with a sharper vit at intervals. the steeple swallow gives it on the wing, over the square, above the slate roofs. the twittering is for the colony. the vit is the punctuation.
when the parish bell rings the song scatters but does not stop — the birds keep singing as they reform the arc. you can hear it at evensong from the tower steps, woven through the chime, settling again only once the last bell has folded back into the stone.
— heard the vit in time with the hour. could not say which had begun first. — r., from the steps.