THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 319 



near and far — the cry is answered, 'hiit — hiit, hiit — liiit, liiit — hiit,' in 

 loud clear tones, and from all sides its travelling companions, wakened 

 for the journey, rise upwards, following in the wake of the earUest 

 starter — the latter, however, when the answering voices have an- 

 nounced that all the sleepers are aroused, ceases circling about, and 

 rises, with breast erect and brief and rapid strokes of the wings, 

 almost vertically upwards ; soon all assemble in a somewhat loose 

 swarm, the call-notes are silenced when the last straggler has joined 

 the departing Hock, and the tiny wanderers vanish from sight. 

 While we are still Ustening to their caU-notes growing fainter and 

 fainter in the distance, and straining our eyes for one last look at the 

 little songsters, the first faintly gleaming stars appear in their stead 

 in the deep transparent aether above. Later still, as we gaze 

 upwards to the night sky sown with innumerable points of light, 

 we imagine that those mjriads of shining worlds arc all that moves 

 between lis and the Infinite, while all the time in the heights above 

 us are travelling thousands, nay, millions of living creatures towaixls 

 one fixed goal — small and weak like this little wren of ours, but all 

 guided as safely and surely as are the farthest gleaming stars. 



131. — Fire-crested Wren [Feuerkopfiges Goldhahnchen]. 

 REGULUS IGNICAPILLUS, Naumann.i 



Heligolandish : Miiiisken-Konning = ^ir!y o/tAe Golden-crested Wrens. 

 Regtdus ignicapiUns. Naumann, iii. 983. 



Fire-crested Wren. Dresser, ii. 459. 



Roifelet triple handeau. Temminck, Manuel, i. 231, iii. 15S. 



This species is a little smaller, and by reason of its black eye- 

 streak, stiU somewhat more prettily marked bird than the preced- 

 ing. It visits Heligoland almost as regularly as the latter, but 

 invariably in very small munbers. In the spring it arrives some- 

 what sooner, and in autumn somewhat later, than R.flavicapillus — 

 and thus may be said in a sense to open and close the migration of 

 the crested Wrens. 



This species breeds in central and southern Europe, and in 

 north-west Africa : it does not advance as far north as Scandmavia, 

 and reaches England only in solitary instances. (.)n the east its 

 breeding range does not appear to extend to the Ural. 



Hedge-sparrow — Accentm'. — This genus comprises about twelve 

 species, only two of which occur in Europe as breeding birds ; a 

 third, resident in eastern Asia, A. montanellus, has on a few rare 



' IleijiUns iiinka pill H.I {(', \j. Breliin). 



