20 THE WOOD-WREN 



great bird-multitudes to seek the ancestral 

 homes. Occasionally, as if according to some 

 careful plan, the living mass divided, as band 

 after band broke the close ranks and shaped its 

 course from the main line of flight. These 

 divisions became increasingly frequent, till, as 

 the grey dawn broke slowly in the east, most 

 of the great valleys in mid-Europe were occupied 

 by flocks of twittering birds. 



Almost unobserved, one of the migrant armies 

 reached the shores of Britain just before sunrise, 

 and, after resting for a while in the woods and 

 copses near the southern coast, dispersed in 

 every direction, to fill with song the woodlands 

 now almost breaking into leaf. Among our 

 summer visitors were hundreds of wood-warblers, 

 mostly males ; the females, according to a 

 general habit, having for a little while delayed 

 their journey. Towards evening on the day of 

 his arrival in Britain, one of these wood-warblers 

 reached the island copse below our village in the 

 west. Eecognising that he had returned to the 

 place where last year he had first looked out on 

 the world of summer from the shelter of a snug 

 nest hidden in the grass, he resolved to stay 

 there, and immediately, giving expression to his 

 contentment and delight, burst into song. He 

 was hungry and tired and cold after his long 

 flight from the torrid regions of the south, and 



