96 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



It remains to make mention of a class of weather phenomena 

 which appear to run in cycles extending over i^eriods of many jears. 

 These, though not exercising a controllmg influence on migration 

 in the narrower sense, yet, so far as our experience warrants us in 

 conjecturing, affect the general increase or diminution in the num- 

 bers of birds occurring during such periods. Thus, within about 

 the last thirty years, the number of migrants occurring here, such as 

 Thrushes, small Warblers, Snipe, Plovers, Godwits, Sandpipers, and 

 related species, and, to a less extent, of Hooded Crows, Starlings, 

 Larks, and Chaffinches, appears unquestionably to have undergone 

 a general diminution. Side by side with this change, however, 

 there has been an equally marked alteration in the meteorological 

 conditions of this island. Before this period the weather during 

 the spring months April and May, especially the latter, was mostly 

 fine and warm, with a prevalence of moderate south-easterly winds. 

 During the earlj' morning hours of the second half of April, and still 

 more so in May, light south-east, south-south-east, and southerlj' 

 winds used generally to be accompanied by fine warm rain, which 

 was succeeded by sunshine at about nine o'clock. This latter 

 caused a very dense low-lying and slowlj'-shifting layer of mist to 

 rise from the light soil of the potato-fields of the Upper Plateau; 

 such mists being known here as ' Acl-er bn'igen,' i.e. Field mists 

 {hrogen = to rise in vapours, to steam), while the light warm rains 

 are known as ' Liitj-Finlcen-Rain.' This latter designation means 

 'Small-birds' rain,' a title which is fully justified, for this kind of 

 weather used to be invariably attended by a really numberless swarm 

 of all kinds of Leaf- Warblers, Chats, Wagtails, Tree and Meadow 

 Pipits, Ortolan Buntings, and shnilar species. Goatsuckers might 

 have been roused out of every secret cranny ; Landrails in abun- 

 dance used to run about in the grass ; Dotterels were seen sitting in 

 simple confidence about the ploughed fields, or flying in greater or 

 smaller bands round about in the air, uttering their merry kiltt-ki'dt, 

 Iciltt-kutt, while the blue sky above resounded with the flute-like 

 notes of all the different kinds of Sandpipers. Here and there a 

 Rose-coloured Starling, a Black-headed Bunting {Emheriza melano- 

 cephala), or a Cretzschmar's Bunting (E. ccvsia), was shot ; and the 

 more watchful gunners and fowlers of the island used to bring 

 reports of j^eculiar and unknown birds which had managed to escajDO 

 them by unusual cunning or through some unlucky accident, and 

 whose like they vainly tried to discover in my cabinets. Those 

 were days indeed ! Down in my cool cellar stood a large flat 

 dish, filled with some fifty or sixty of the handsomest speci- 

 ally-selected males of the Northern Bluethroat, while rows of 

 other more or less valuable birds were hung round about, in 



