84 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



reproduced in that hexameter of dactyls lacking the 

 caesura : — 



'OpOis eireira ireoovOe kvXivScto Acta? aviSt]$. 



May 17. — Jays clearly possess a conscience, and the 

 memory of their crimes sits heavily thereon. They have 

 been noisy enough all the spring"; but now, one never 

 hears a squeak, and might conclude they had gone away. 

 Not so ; they have merely retired into the deep wood to 

 nest, and have become as "mum as mutes." Their 

 deep instinctive cunning teaches them the value of 

 silence. Jays are scarce birds now, through the per- 

 secution of gamekeepers ; but there remain a few in the 

 woods at Hesleyside, and one pair nests in Houxty 

 wood. 



May 20. — Wheatears are now laying on the high 

 moors. One nest, in an old stone-dyke, has four eggs ; 

 others are built in deep holes or cracks in the peat, 

 or beneath the grey boulders that lie strewn on the 

 moors. Lower down, the tree-pipits had eggs a week 

 or more ago ; so also had the redstarts, whitethroats, 

 and willow-wrens. Now the earlier whinchats are laying ; 

 but the bulk of the summer-warblers do not commence 

 till a week, or ten days later, to wit : Wood-wren, chiff- 

 chaff, garden- and sedge-warblers, blackcap, and pied and 

 spotted flycatchers. 



For this latter group, the first week in June may be 

 regarded as the average date for completed clutches. 



Two notes may here be appropriately interjected. 

 The first, illustrative of the enormous distances these 

 tiny creatures have traversed within the few preceding 

 weeks : the following British species are included in 

 his lists of the avifauna of British East Africa (lying 



