6 
Oftener than once I have seen the little round sooty faces of the 
young ones peering out of their holes and plaintively crying for food, 
after which they have crept back to die. In these very nests, on the 
return of another season, the same old birds have been known to 
rearrange their building-materials, a few straws being merely laid 
over the bones of the abandoned to receive a new family.” 
It is a matter of surprise to some persons, as indeed it may be to 
the most astute philosopher, how such frail little birds as the Chiff- 
chaff and its allies can cross the sea from France or Portugal with- 
out exhibiting any very apparent signs of fatigue; yet we know 
that they do so, and moreover that a still smaller species, the Gold- 
crest (Regulus cristatus), effects a much longer passage when crossing 
the German Ocean in its migration from the opposite parts of the Conti- 
nent. I must not omit to mention, however, that occasionally hundreds 
of these diminutive birds are found in an exhausted state in the early 
morning on the Northumberland and Norfolk coasts; and in sup- 
port of this I may quote here a very interesting passage from the 
work of the late gifted Mr. Selby, which runs thus :—* On the 24th 
and 25th of October 1822, after a very severe gale, with thick fog, 
from the north-east (but veering towards its conclusion to the east and 
south-east), thousands of the Goldcrests were seen to arrive upon the 
sea-shore and sandbanks of the Northumbrian coast, many of them 
so fatigued by their flight or perhaps by the unfavourable shift of 
the wind, as to be unable to rise again from the ground; and great 
numbers were in consequence caught or destroyed. The flight must 
have been immense in number, as its extent was traced through the 
whole length of the coasts of Northumberland and Durham. There 
appears little doubt of this having been a migration from the more 
northern provinces of Europe (probably furnished by the pine-forests 
of Norway, Sweden, &c.), from the circumstance of its arrival being 
simultaneous with that of large flights of the Woodcock, Fieldfare, 
and Redwing.” 
Woodcocks, we know, generally arrive in fair condition on our 
north-eastern shores at dawn, with a wind that is either easterly or 
within a point or two of that direction ; but should the wind shift 
after their flight has commenced, the increased muscular effort 
required lands them on our coast in an exhausted and emaciated state. 
Assuming, however, that birds, both great and small, have availed 
themselves of a favourable slant of wind, no great amount of mus- 
cular effort would be requisite, inasmuch as those arriving from 
the south will require little more than an hour to cross the Channel, 
while the passage of the German Ocean by those coming from the north 
may occupy a short night*. It is interesting to note that some of our 
migrants effect the passage to our shores during the night, and others 
by day; as a rule, it is the small sylvan birds which come at the 
former time, as is evidenced by numbers being found at the base of 
the various lighted beacons of our southern and south-eastern coasts, 
against which, attracted by the light, they have flown and killed 
* Asan evidence that birds are capable of taking very long flights with 
apparent ease, [ may quote a letter to ‘The Times’ of June 27, 1872, which 
