2 SPRING 



to the lowlands and the milder counties. Wheatears are 

 thorough birds of the open country, haunting downs, warrens, 

 seaside cliffs and dunes, and the smoother stretches of turf 

 on moors and mountains. Their song, which is curious and 

 cheerful, is seldom heard in March, when the greater number 

 of the birds observed are still journeying by stages to their 

 nesting-places ; and thus we are chiefly dependent on the eye 

 for our earliest knowledge of the wheatear. But no small 



bird is more conspicuous than 

 a wheatear on an open down ; 

 it is perpetually taking short 

 flights from one exposed perch 

 to another, in the course of 

 which its white patch on the 

 rump is strikingly displayed. 

 As soon as it chooses a spot 

 where it means to nest, it has 

 an anxious and obtrusive way 

 of flitting from perch to perch 

 with a clacking cry, and rest- 

 lessly twitching its tail. It has the same habit to a less 

 extent even when disturbed at a casual halting-place ; and it 

 is only a very weary and wayworn wheatear, or one very 

 eagerly bent on migration, that will flit straight away from 

 its haunt without this little exhibition of anxious proprietor- 

 ship. Wheatears generally travel in small parties, and this 

 also makes them more easily observed. The earliest arrivals 

 occur very early in March, and by the twentieth of the 

 month they are beginning to be common in the bird's 

 favourite haunts by the sea and on bold, turfy hills with 

 outcropping stones. The wheatear builds and takes shelter 

 in holes, and therefore likes dry, broken ground. Rabbit- 

 warrens are much to its liking, and on high-lying ground 



