286 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



confidently. The people of the house informed me that 

 this same nest had been occupied, off and on, through- 

 out the summer; and if we take it that eggs were 

 laid at the beginning of May, it must be assumed 

 that this pair of martins had been occupied almost 

 continuously with the breeding business for six 

 months, and were now rearing their third, or possibly 

 their fourth, brood. A long period when we consider 

 that they could not have had a worse season: bad 

 everywhere in England, it was exceptionally so on 

 the Norfolk coast, where the winds and cold were most 

 felt and the flooding rains in August were greatest. 



As the young birds did not come out during the 

 two following days, I began to look for their abandon- 

 ment, whereupon the women of the house com- 

 passionately offered to take them in and feed them, 

 in the hope of keeping them alive until the return 

 of warm weather, when they would be liberated. 

 From that time onwards they and others in the town 

 who had begun to take an interest in the birds helped 

 me to keep a watch on the nest. Assuredly the young 

 would be abandoned and that very shortly; the 

 weather was rough and cold, food becoming scarcer 

 each day; and for a month or six weeks the impulse 

 to fly south, the "mighty breath, which in a powerful 

 language, felt not heard, instructs the fowls of heaven," 

 must have been worrying the brains of those two 

 overworked little martins. 



But again the expected did not happen; the parents 

 did not forsake their young, and on two occasions, 

 one on October 25, the other five days later, they 



