FIRST COMERS 



cold, or the diminution of the supply of insects overcomes 

 them, and there is no good evidence that these lingering 

 birds have ever survived till spring. House-martins are 

 usually the last of their family to depart, but swallows are 

 the earliest to arrive ; and it is not a very rare experience to 

 see a March swallow in the southern and western counties. 

 Small parties — usually from two to ten birds — appear here 

 and there in the last week of 

 the month, and are usually 

 seen on fine days skimming 

 easily at some distance over- 

 head, bent on making good 

 speed to their summer quar- 

 ters further inland. The flight 

 of the migrating swallow is 

 much like that of the clouded 

 yellow butterfly, which is also 

 a migrant ; it looks desultory 

 and unhurried, and yet covers 

 a great distance in a very short 

 time. 



March cuckoos are much 

 scarcer than March swallows, 

 and yet undoubtedly occur. There is no event of spring, 

 however, over which the unwary observer is so likely to be 

 deceived. It is the immemorial practice of British school 

 children to begin imitating the cry of the cuckoo on any fine 

 spring morning when primroses and violets suggest other 

 associations of spring ; and the imitation is often quite 

 good enough to delude the uncritical. Sparrow-hawks and 

 kestrels are also apt to be mistaken for cuckoos when there 

 is a hot spring feeling in the air, and the mind outstrips the 

 calendar. But some of the records are too well authenti- 



STONE-CURLEW 



