BIRDS OF THE HEATH 301 



sleet and snow notwithstanding, the summer is 

 really drawing near. It is no covert-loving bird. 

 On the contrary, it stands out bravely in the open 

 downs, flirting and expanding its conspicuously 

 white and black tail, and uttering a sharp " chack- 

 chack " as it flits from one slight eminence to 

 another. Its affection for wide open spaces is so 

 constant that, like the Skylark, it not only usually 

 refrains from alighting upon branch or spray, but 

 generally avoids the near neighbourhood of trees 

 altogether. 



When the Wheatears arrive in their thousands on 

 the southern and eastern coasts, generally in the 

 morning, they pause for a little time for rest and 

 refreshment, then a pro23ortion of the great army 

 at once proceeds northwards, and in a few days 

 every county from Sussex to Caithness has its 

 contingent as the birds hark back to the widely- 

 separate haunts of their forefathers. Nothing, 

 perhaps, in avian history is more interesting than 

 the fidelity with which so many birds pass by long 

 ranges of apparently most happy resting-places, 

 and, guided either by experience or inherited 

 instinct, seek far-distant and barren patches of land 

 which they have come to regard as home. A 

 further matter of interest is suggested by the annual 

 arrival of so many Wheatears on the English coast. 

 It is frequently stated that if rare birds — the Blue- 

 throats, for example — were permitted to settle here 

 unmolested, they would in time become fairly 

 common species. The facts do not warrant this 

 conclusion. It is, of course, possible to stamp out 

 given races — the Great Skuas or the Reed Warblers, 



