INTRODUCTION.

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¢ the caged Turtle Dove, Nightingale, or Whitethroat during the period at which, were they free, they
of the cage ee

° a aOR a Ae an8e and appar nt resignation to
would be leaving our shore 5 Ouce let that period be passed, their effo1 [Se GeasGanc c ] ] are
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their prison ensues.“ It sometimes happens,” says Mr. R. Gray, ‘ that Swifts, obeying their unconquerable
jer Ss ‘ Se S * .

‘astincts, will at the close of a stormy season desert their unfledged young, and leave them to perish of

Ss Sy € YS . ed

hunger. Late breeds especially are subject to this unnatural desertion. Oftener than once I have seen the
Bs . : re gee neo ae 7 7 ed o a “ar

little round sooty faces of the young ones peering out of their holes and plaintively crying for food, after

which they have crept back to die. In these very nests, on the return of another season, the same old birds
have been known to rearrange their building-materials, a few straws being merely laid over the bones of the

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abandoned to receive a new family.

It is a matter of surprise to some persons, as indeed it may be to the most astute philosopher, how such
frail little birds as the Chiffchaff and its allies can cross the sea from France or Portugal without exhibiting
any very apparent signs of fatigue ; yet we know that they do so, and moreover that a still smaller species,
the Goldcrest (Regulus cristatus), effects a much longer passage when crossing the German Ocean in its
migration from the opposite parts of the continent. I must not omit to mention, however, that occasionally
hundreds of these diminutive birds are found in an exhausted state in the early morning on the Northum-
berland and Norfolk coasts; and in support of this I may quote here a very interesting passage from the
work of the late gifted Mr, Selby, which runs thus :— On the 24th and 25th of October 1822, after a very
severe gale, with thick fog, from the north-east (but veering towards its conclusion to the east and south-
east), thousands of the Goldcrests were seen to arrive upon the sea shore and sandbanks of the Northumbrian
coast, many of them so fatigued by their flight or perhaps by the unfavourable shift of the wind, as to be
unable to rise again from the ground; and great numbers were in consequence caught or destroyed. The
flight must have been immense in number, as its extent was traced through the whole length of the coasts
of Northumberland and Durham. There appears little doubt of this having been a migration from the more
northern provinces of Europe (probably furnished by the pine-forests of Norway, Sweden, &c.), from the
circumstance of its arrival being simultaneous with that of large flights of the Woodcock, Fieldfare, and

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Woodcocks, we know, generally arrive in fair condition on our north-eastern shores at dawn, with a wind

that is either easterly or within a point or two of that direction ; but should the wind shift after their flight

has commenced, the increased muscular effort required lands them on our coast in an exhausted and

emaciated state. suming ‘ever re ede ; :
state. Assuming, however, that birds, both great and small, have availed themselves of a

favourable sl: WY ee > 2 oo
irable slant of wind, no great amount of muscular effort would be requisite, Inasmuch as those arriving

from the s Tle ciniie eles ce
om the south will require little more than an hour to cross the Channel, while the passage of the German

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