34 SPRING 



east of England, and are sometimes not seen for a whole 

 summer except when passing inland in April or early May. 

 Redstarts haunt the same damp or shady places as wagtails 

 and robins ; but whinchats, though closely allied to them, are 

 birds of rough wastes and open commons, like stonechats. 

 Both species leave the more exposed commons before the 

 autumn gales and frosts ; but the whinchat is purely 



a summer visitor to this 

 country, while the stone- 

 chat is only a partial 

 migrant, and usually re- 

 turns to his breezy furze- 

 brakes by the end of March, 

 before the whinchat reap- 

 pears from its winter home 

 in Africa. Many stone- 

 chats go no further for the 

 winter than the sheltered 

 valleys or the seashore. 

 Both cock birds are gay of 

 plumage and conspicuous 

 in their ways ; but the whinchat's slenderer build makes 

 it the more attractive of the two to watch, as it flits from 

 spray to spray of yellow furze, or clings sideways to a stem 

 of dead knapweed or fennel, that bloomed when it was last 

 in England. 



The same warm April days that bring the whinchat to 

 the yellowing commons fill the lanes and overgrown hollows 

 with the summer babble of the whitethroats. The common 

 whitethroat or nettle-creeper is one of the most abundant 

 summer birds in most English districts, as can be well judged 

 even in winter from the number of the straw- twined nests 

 revealed among the thorns and nettles by the falling leaves. 



