THE GREAT MIGRATION 



4i 



for the seeds of the charlock, and not, like the wood-pigeons, 

 for the wheat. But neither game-preserving nor the in- 

 crease in some districts of young plantations is enough 

 to explain the turtle-dove's recent prosperity. There are 

 tides in the affairs of birds which observation still cannot 

 fathom ; no one really knows why the starling or the ring- 

 dove or the turtle-dove have been sweeping forward like 

 the tide of settlement in the Canadian West, while the 

 quail and the landrail decline. There has been a slight 

 revival of the landrail during the last two or three years 

 in some of the southern and eastern counties where it 



COCK BUTCHER-BIRD 



used to herald the April grass-growth so persistently with 

 its monotonous ' crake, crake,' fifteen or twenty years ago ; 

 possibly this was due, as has been suggested, to the wet 

 summer of 1909, which delayed the cutting of the seed and 

 clover crops, and consequently enabled the corncrakes to 

 bring off their broods in safety. But the pleasant monotony 

 of the corncrake's time-keeping note is still far less heard 

 in the southern fields than one could wish, though it is 

 commoner in many parts of the north and west. 



When the double murmur of the turtle-dove is heard 

 in the May elder-brakes and hawthorn-clumps, the season 

 of migration is already far advanced, and the majority of 

 the summer visitors are already settling down in their 



