devil screecher

noun

devil screecher

noun

Etymology From the bird's piercing cry.

1

UK, Archaic A swift.

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.1883, Edgar MacCulloch, “Notes, Queries, Notices and News”, in The Folk-Lore Journal, volume 1, number 12, page 394:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.