BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 57 



of the year. I myself entertain, and often express, a grudge 

 against the " migrants" for staying only so long as it is fine ; 

 but as often as I do so, my conscience reproaches me, for, 

 after eill, the nightingale shows its affection for its birthplace 

 by coming back to it ; and, " in spite of all temptations to 

 belong to other nations," remains a true-born English bird. 

 What more could it do? It might certainly stay and freeze 

 to death. But why should we expect nightingales to do more 

 than we expect men and women to do ? Which of us, if 

 warned by doctors against the English winter and possessing 

 the means to go abroad, would stop at home to die here, just 

 to show that we are lovers of our country ? So it would 

 be quite in keeping with the sympathetic and kindly 

 tendency of contemporary natural history, if we looked upon 

 the birds when they come, as our own birds coming home, and 

 when they go, as going abroad under the inexorable compul- 

 sion of health ; if we welcomed them in Spring as returning 

 fellow-countrymen, and bade them god- speed in Autumn, as 

 delicate folk who would, if they could, but dare not, stop in 

 Britain all the year round. And who can blame the birds, apart 

 from necessities of life and death, for leaving our shores ? 

 Think of the climate they can always, by a morning's flight, 

 enjoy, year in and year out, ''in foreign countries"; what 

 range of space, what perennial abundance of food, and then 

 calculate the force of inherited affection for the place of their 

 birth that urges them, hosts of little feeble people, to dare the 



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