WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE 



To most people in England the arrival of the winter migrants is 

 signalled on some cold clear November morning by the harsh 

 clack of the fieldfare heard overhead. The date of the field- 

 fare's arrival varies a good deal according to the weather; 

 and the weather in its summer home in Russia and Scandi- 

 navia has more influence on its coming than the warmth 

 or coldness of the season in England. But its summer 

 quarters are near enough to our islands to be affected by 

 many of the same changes of wind, and we usually see and 

 hear the fieldfare when the wind has been blowing keenly 

 for twelve or twenty-four hours from the north or north-east, 

 and the morning has been white with rime. Fieldfares are 

 gregarious even in their summer nesting-places in the northern 

 pine forests ; and we see them much less seldom in Eng- 

 land singly or in small parties than in considerable flocks. 

 When we hear these big thrushes clacking in the tops of the 

 hedgerow elms, or stringing high overhead with their careless, 

 dropping flight, it is one of the great turning-points of the 

 year. Their harsh notes and grey backs tell of winter, with 

 its bare boughs and bracing chills, and its sense of multi- 



