devil screecher
English edit
Etymology edit
From the bird's piercing cry.
Noun edit
devil screecher (plural devil screechers)
- (archaic, UK) A swift.
- 1883, Edgar MacCulloch, “Notes, Queries, Notices and News”, in The Folk-Lore Journal, volume 1, number 12, page 394:
- My informant seemed to look upon the swift as an uncanny bird, and called it by a name I had never heard before, devil-screecher.