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thrushes, redwings, fieldfares, pied wagtails, meadow pipits, larks, 
rooks, hooded crows, finches, sparrows, linnets, red poles, and 
snow buntings. These birds continue to leave for about two 
months. Rather later starlings, goldcrests, ducks, and waders. 
leave in large numbers, Towards the end of March the migrants 
from Africa and the Mediterranean basins begin to arrive, such as- 
wheatears and chiffchaffs. In April many more return from the- 
south—warblers, redstarts, the cuckoo, the wryneck, the swallow, 
and tree pipets, sandpipers, and terns. In May the garden 
warblers, spotted flycatcher, nightjar, swift and turtledove. By 
the first week in June, this spring migration has ceased, and about. 
the middle of July the autumn flight is commenced by Arctic 
waders, flying south over our coasts. Harly in August many more. 
help to swell the numbers—knots, grey plovers, common sand- 
pipers, lapwings, ringed plovers, greenshanks, curlews, swifts, 
wheatears, willow wrens, wood wrens, and whinchats. Early ine 
September, swallows and martins begin to start; ring-ouzels, 
thrushes, and wagtails also, and still more Arctic waders pass by. 
By the beginning of October most of our summer birds are gone, 
and by the end, practically all. During October there is a great. 
rush of birds into and over the British Islands from the west of 
Asia and east of Europe, consisting of thrushes, larks, goldcrests, 
finches, starlings, crows, rooks and ring doves, striking on the- 
east coast. Here are some reports from the east coast for October- 
15th, 1885: From the Farne Isles, off Northumberland, we hear 
of a great rush of fieldfares, night and day, and the same at the 
Dudgeon Lighthouse, off the Wash, 200 miles south. Also large: 
numbers of blackbirds by day and night, striking the entire eastern 
coast line of England for three days, also two large flights of 
chaffinches, enormous rushes of skylarks for three days, enormous. 
numbers of starlings, and an almost continuous rush of hooded 
crows and rooks for three days, between the Humber and the Isle- 
of Thanet. In 1882 enormous multitudes of goldcrests continued 
to arrive right through October. For days and days together larks- 
may be watched arriving into England in a scarcely broken stream, 
and their cries fill the air all through the night. The breadth of 
some of these bird waves is almost incredible. They will some- 
times strike simultaneously almost the whole length from the- 
Faroe Islands, or the Shetlands and Orkneys, in the north, to the 
Channel Islands in the South. Having now alluded to most of 
the facts known about migration in a more or less general way, I 
wish at this point to bring to your attention a remarkable book 
written by Herr Giatke, who for fifty years has kept an exact. 
account of bird life in Heligoland, the little island in the North 
Sea, about forty miles from the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. 
